Paris
The venerable French daily Le Monde spluttered to defend itself last week from charges that it is a den of hypocrisy and shady finance. In a new book called The Hidden Face of Le Monde, authors Philippe Cohen and Pierre Pean say that the newspaper is run by a cabal of Corsicans who secretly hate France. They say the paper runs far too many stories about France’s low points, such as its Nazi collaboration during the Vichy era and the torturing of rebels in Algeria. But French journalist unions and even rival papers disagreed, running stories denouncing the book as mean-spirited. “Le Monde is no temple of virtue,” the newspaper’s own editors admitted, but it is committed to providing news that is “clear, precise, rigorous, and independent.”
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