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Seeminly the owner of France Soirs is not a big fan of the now former editor in chiefs France Soir managers defence of free speech.
According to Ekstra Bladet the editor in chief Manager was today fired by the owner.
Further info are not available right now. One blog that will probably be quick with English news on the subject is the French blog !No Pasarán!

I for one would gladly sign a petition protesting this clearly anti free-speech move by the newspaper owners.

Update 1:
More information is now available.
The owner of France Soir Raymond Lakah (red: a french-egyptian) said in a statement to the french newsagency that he "had decided to remove Jacques Lefranc as editor in chief manager of the newspaper as a strong sign of respect for belief and the conviction of people"
Furthermore in his statement:
"We express our regret to the muslim society and alle those people who were shocked by the publication of the drawings"
(Translated from Danish from Ekstra Bladet)

A bit of background can be found here French Muslims to Sue Paper Over Cartoons. Attention: this is a newspaper from Qatar so stay critical about the truthvalue of some claims.

However there are some interesting things in this article:

Concerning why France Soir printed the cartoons:

The heavily-indebted paper opted for reprinting the blasphemous cartoons to boost its declining sales and shift the attention from strikes staged by its reporters and editors at unpaid salaries and unknown future, sources close to the daily told IOL on condition not to be named.

A group of editors and employees submitted a petition on December 19 to the prime minister to save their paper, which is owned by Egyptian-French Raymond Lakah, from bankruptcy as they faced sacking.

“The paper’s bankruptcy, no doubt, played a key role,” said Breze.

“The paper’s act is ridiculous and irresponsible,” added Al-Arabi Kashat, the imam Al-Dawa mosque in Paris.

Sad really:
1) That it might have been more for profit than because of principle defense of freedom of speech
2) Because they faced with an empty legal threat (there is nothing in French law that forbid the drawings France Soir published) still chose the cowards way

Update 2:

Jyllands Posten has reported that the fired Jacques Lefranc is the manager of France Soir (and NOT the editor in chief as stated in the article from Ekstra Bladet)

They go on to say:

It is surprising that the editor in chief of France Soir, Serge Faubert who declared his pride of leading the necessary defence of free speech, according to the statement is not affected by the firing.

Already yesterday it was clear that there were open disagreements at the newspaper about the publication of the drawings. Some journalists were against it, and they were seemingly backed up by the generaldirector for one of the newspapers partners, Presse Alliance, Eric Fauveau, even though he said to Jyllands-Posten, that if journlalists didn't stand up for freedom of speech, they should find something else to do.
(Translated from Danish from Jyllands-Posten)

Comment: Translations can be a tricky thing. Seemingly the people at Ekstra Bladet are not so good at French (and my French is limited to terms that have something to do with cycling). The translations I do of selected parts of articles are done from Danish to English as good as I can. But even I cannot do much if a Danish article has a false translation from say French.



Frontpage of France Soir

This entry was posted on 1.2.06 at 23:25. You can skip to the end and leave a response.