French press review 28 February 2012

Jean Dujardin, the winner of the Best Actor in Sunday’s Oscars, graces the front pages of all the newspapers in France today.

Le Monde devotes three pages to the Oscars, and the Artist.

In a long article that profiles Dujardin, his rugby trainer from childhood recounts how difficult it was for him in school. Apparently, Dujardin struggled with writing, and showed signs of having dyspraxia, a neurological disease that affects physical coordination. He was also hopeless at rugby, but was apparently a fast runner, which saved him from being constantly tackled by his three brothers.

But it was Dujardin’s ability to make people laugh that made up for what he lacked in the classroom and on the rugby field. It’s his humouristic charisma the paper says, that Dujardin has been using to charm Hollywood.

Journalists come under scrutiny in Libération, which leads with the headline: "How transparent?"

Libération’s Brussels correspondent has written a book about why journalists in France don’t make revelations about the sex lives of politicians.

Dominique Strauss Kahn’s insatiable sex life offers plenty of fodder for the author Jean Quatremer. In reviewing the book, Libération admits the anglo-saxon press has much more of an appetite for sexual exposés.

French journalists by contrast, the article says, dine, holiday and even have love affairs with politicians. DSK and his former journalist wife, Anne Sinclair being a case in point.

There’s also an editorial devoted to the issue in Libération. Nicolas Demorand, the editor of Libération, admits that the French press needs to go further in exploring whether or not the sex lives of politicians are newsworthy.

Demorand says this is needed, not to be voyeuristic or for moral reasons but just to inform when there is a need to do so.

The right-wing paper Le Figaro looks at Senegal's presidential election, and says that Wade didn't get the easy victory he was expecting.

This is what most of the papers are saying, except that Libération also notes that Wade does have something to celebrate. Which is that the rumours circulating before voting started, of possible electon fraud, have been laid to rest.

Proving that Senegal is still the democracy it has long been famed to be, the paper says.

Senegal's election is given the most column inches in Le Monde’s international section.

Who's who in 2012 Senegalese presidential election

Their correspondent got a few brief words out of Macky Sall, the surprise contender who looks set to go head-to-head with president Abdoulaye Wade in a second round next month. Sall, the paper says, is being modest about his prospects in the second round.

Le Monde also cites Amadou Sall - Wade’s campaign spokeman - as saying that ”We are not going to do what Laurent Gbagbo did.”

That being a reference to Côte d’Ivoire’s former president who outstayed his welcome, and by doing so threw his country into chaos and now finds himself awaiting trial in the Hague.

I don’t suppose Wade relishes the thought of ending his days looking out of a cell window across the rainy Netherlands.