In April 2023, there was the outburst of actress Maïwenn, who pulled the hair of Mediapart’s director, Edwy Plenel, in a Paris restaurant. It was her response to the unauthorized leaks of her testimony before judges in a sexual assault case against her ex-husband, filmmaker Luc Besson, who was eventually acquitted. That deposition, which should have been protected by judicial secrecy, nonetheless ended up splashed across Mediapart’s pages, despite the actress’s formal refusal to authorize the publication of her statements recorded by the police.

And now, on September 25, Mediapart’s disregard for journalistic ethics once again sparked a gesture of defiance: that of former First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, who tore away Mediapart’s red mic flag, thrust in front of television cameras during Nicolas Sarkozy’s statement after the hearing that sentenced him to five years in prison in the so-called “Libyan financing” case. The investigation into this affair had been opened ten years earlier, following Mediapart’s publication of a document allegedly attesting to such financing. Yet, the court established—ten years later—that the document was a forgery. Worse still, Bechir Saleh, former chief of staff to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and the supposed recipient of the document, claims to have warned Mediapart’s journalists, before publication, that it was a fake!

For her act, Maïwenn was prosecuted by Mediapart and sentenced by the Paris Police Court to a €400 fine. Should we now expect Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, in turn, to be prosecuted and convicted for the “crime” of lèse-majesté against a Mediapart-branded microphone? What is beyond doubt, however, is that no one will hold Edwy Plenel and his newspaper accountable for tarnishing the honor of the profession by deliberately publishing a document they knew, beforehand, to be false.

By acting in this way, Mediapart, which has always proclaimed itself the champion of uncompromising investigative journalism, crossed a red line: the one separating legitimate investigation from biased inquisition. Publishing a document known to be falsified, merely because it could support a damning narrative, is no longer informing—it is staging a media trial.

I personally met Bechir Saleh, the former chief of staff to Muammar Gaddafi, presented as the supposed recipient of the infamous document. He told me bluntly—as he had also told both Mediapart and Le Monde journalists—that the paper was a fake. And he had said so well before its publication. The editorial decision to make it public despite this does not fall under a “good faith error,” but rather under a deliberate act of bad faith.

Such a gesture carries immense weight. It is ethically condemnable and journalistically indefensible. For the role of the press is not to lay traps for democracy, but to enlighten public opinion while respecting established facts. One may criticize a politician, investigate their shadows, and scrutinize their relationship with power and money. But one cannot, in good conscience, manufacture suspicion by relying on a falsified piece of evidence.

Ten years later, the court may have established that the document at the origin of the case was a forgery, but the damage was done. The course of justice had already been steered by an initial manipulation. In this drift, it is less the former head of state who emerges broken than the honor of the press itself. Mediapart, while claiming to defend public virtue, in reality compromised the honor of a profession that relies on the trust it inspires.

Between investigation and inquisition lies the invisible but sacred boundary of ethics. By crossing it, Mediapart not only failed in its duty: it set a troubling example for democracy, of journalism that believes itself above the rules, confusing the pursuit of truth with political execution.

It is this moral shipwreck that we must denounce today, not to defend a politician, but to remind ourselves what the role of journalism should always be: to search, to verify, to establish—never to cheat, deceive, or betray.