Le Canard enchaîné

Reader consulting a copy of the French newspaper "Le Canard enchaîné" on Wednesday, December 21, 2011.

Le Canard enchaîné is a French satirical newspaper published on Wednesdays, with a circulation of 446,000 copies. Founded in 1915 by Maurice and Jeanne Maréchal, it is one of the oldest newspapers in today's French press. It features investigative journalism on the French political and business landscape, as well as comic strips, caricatures, and humorous news stories.

Presentation

His own name refers to the newspaper L'homme libre ("The Free Man"), which was forced to close down by government censorship: Le Canard enchaîné means "The chained duck", but canard (duck) in French slang also means "newspaper".

The Canard is known for its independence, since it does not include advertising and its owners do not belong to any political or economic group. He has a political bias favorable to the left and anticlericalism, although he criticizes all political parties without any special preference.

Their slogan is « La liberté de la presse ne s'use que si l'on ne s'en sert pas » (Freedom of the press only wears out when we don't use it), which sums up the editorial line of this publication well: the Canard talks about all the public scandals (political, economic, judicial, etc.) in France, but also about what happens in other countries.

The Canard has a fixed presentation of 8 pages in which, in addition to information and editorials, it publishes reviews of novels, plays or films, as well as comics.

Scandals

Case of the plumbers

On December 3, 1973, police officers from the Territorial Security Directorate, disguised as plumbers, were discovered trying to install a spy microphone in the Canard offices. Due to the scandal this caused, Interior Minister Raymond Marcellin eventually had to resign, although Marcellin is said to have been the scapegoat for a decision taken on behalf of other members of the government, especially the Defense Minister, interested in knowing the identity of the journalists who communicated the most sensitive information to the Canard.