¹ In the period 1954–63 about thirty-five books were seized, two-thirds of them published by Maspero or Editions de Minuit. All but a few discussed torture or presented the FLN case; the rest came from activist sources.

² RTF has a television monopoly except in frontier areas. Its national radio monopoly is broken by commercial stations in neighboring countries, Europe I (Saar) and Radio Luxembourg. These have captured the bulk of the audience. Though they enjoy a reputation for greater objectivity they, too, are vulnerable to official pressures.

Gaullists have often argued that exploitation of the official radio simply balances a hostile press, but even if this were justification it was not true during the Algerian war, when the press was overwhelmingly pro-governmental.

³ Journal Officiel, Assemblée Nationale (Débats), Nov. 8, 1961, p. 3969Google Scholar.

⁴ For fuller discussion see Pinto, R., La Liberté d'Opinion (Paris, 1955)Google Scholar, useful though now dated.

⁵ Le Monde, June 10, 1960 (Messmer). Of the fifty papers I questioned, almost all replied that they had not been brought to trial. Figures derive from them, Le Monde and the trade press.

⁶ La Presse Française, May-June 1962. French legal practice authorizes saisie administrative when it is indispensable to “ensure the maintenance or re-establishment of public order.” Damages can be awarded in case of abuse. This presumably explains why such seizures were made rarely, if ever, in 1954–63.

A succession of laws has also authorized saisie judiciaire of all copies of obscene or anarchist publications, or of material insulting foreign heads of government or inciting to physical violence—but not of seditious material.

⁷ Cf. Charivari c. Préfet de Police. The paper was seized for criticism of Mr. Khrushchev's visit to France. But the 1834 law authorizing seizures for offenses against a foreign head of government requires a formal complaint from that government. Charivari demanded restitution of the seized edition because the government had acted without this protest. In court, however, the representative of the prefecture declared that seizure was due to another article, damaging to military morale. This could not be rebutted (and the case failed, according to Charivari) because the officials carrying out the seizure had refused to issue the statutory procès-verbaux specifying under which law they were acting.

Although over three months had elapsed since the seizure and no information had been opened, the Tribunal refused to order the return of seized copies, commenting that “the fact [that no enquiry has begun] must be proved, and if it were, since the code of penal procedure fixes no time limit for opening such an enquiry [the prefect] can still act if he wishes.” It also insisted that a restitution order would be a decision on the merits. L'Echo de la Presse et de la Publicité (hereafter L'Echo) June 5, 1960.

⁸ Le Monde, Jan. 13 and Feb. 18, 1960.

⁹ Soc. Frampar, C. E. June 24, 1960; Rec. Sirey, 1960, J. 348 ff.Google Scholar; Rec. Dalloz, 1960, J. 744 ffGoogle Scholar. The story for which one issue was ostensibly seized did not even appear in the Algiers edition. See also the incisive judgment of the Rouen tribunal administratif annuling for excès de pouvoir a 1961 seizure of Témoignage Chrétien, Le Monde, Dec. 8–9, 1963.

¹⁰ Le Monde, Nov. 27 and Dec. 25, 1959.

¹¹ La Presse Française, March 1961.

¹² Le Monde, May 17, 1963. The Dec. 13, 1960 issue was seized for “demoralizing the army” by three headlines about the grave riots in the Casbah: “encore 7 morts (tous musulmans) à Alger”; “la Casbah toujours encerclée par l'Armée”; “bilan officiel des deux jours: 90 morts, dont 84 musulmans.” The court noted that “it is not presently contended that the facts advanced were false, or that they were related in such a way as to demoralise the army.” However the Court dismissed a claim for damages for the seizure of the previous day's edition.

¹³ Galmot, Y., “Le Contrôle Juridictionnel des Saisies d'Ecrits Imprimés,” Etudes et Documents, 1960Google Scholar.

¹⁴ L'Espoir was not subversive even in an Algerian context; it was a rare attempt to bridge the gulf between Europeans and Moslems—the Mollet government's professed policy. It reappeared briefly in 1960, had to give up again, and resumed publication after independence. Communauté Algérienne, another liberal organ, also suspended publication. M. Lacoste told the 1956 Socialist congress, “The press is totally free in Algeria, as in France, to express the ideas which seem right to it and to attack what it wishes.”

¹⁵ The mainland press was on sale but vulnerable to seizure and vigilante action. Radio Alger became almost wholly infiltrated by diehards and did little to compensate for the reactionary views of the local press. A parliamentary delegation commented in 1956, “We have been struck, even horrified, by certain layouts, calculated to stir terror and hatred, surprised at the abundance of details given, of a kind to favor permanent and sometimes unhealthy excitement in a public gripped by disquiet.” J.O.(A.N.) Documents, No. 1977, May 29, 1956.

¹⁶ L'Est Républicain, Dec. 12, 1961. These remarks refer most strongly to Algiers. The Oran and Constantine papers were less violent; Oran Républicain took courageously moderate positions.

¹⁷ Sources: Le Monde, Presse-Actualité, Cahiers de l'1.1.p. L'Echo and fifty of the publications affected. Totals are believed almost complete for the mainland but not for Algeria, where they have indicative value only. Publishers often never heard of seizures there; some lost count. The ban on extreme-left papers there was a prior seizure which cannot be quantified; nor can occasions when papers were “blocked” for hours or days rather than formally seized. As Algeria sank into anarchy it became increasingly difficult to distinguish official seizures from those of a host of self-styled authorities.

¹⁸ Arbitrary ways die hard. As seizures rapidly diminished, the number of journalists charged with insulting the President of the Republic reached unprecedented proportions. M. François Mitterand, apparently referring only to press cases, speaks of ten prosecutions between 1875 and 1958 and over 150 since 1958. Le Monde, July 16, 1963. In the French Antilles there were still seizures for “separatism,” for which the pro-Peking monthly Révolution was seized on the mainland in March 1964.

Algeria celebrated independence by imposing general press censorship, banning nine right-wing French papers, seizing issues of others which gave offense, suppressing opposition periodicals and closing nearly every French-language paper, in violation of the Evian agreements.

¹⁹ The most frequent victims on the mainland included: L'Humanité, 25; Témoignages et Documents, 22; Rivarol, 17; La Marseillaise, 15; Libération, 11; France-Observateur, 14; L'Express, 8. Fraternité Française (Poujade) claims the record with over fifty, but I have traced only six. In Algeria approximate figures were: Témoignage Chrétien, over 100; Rivarol, 50; L'Express, 52; France-Observateur, 50; Carrefour, 25; Aux Ecoutes, 22; La Croix, 33; Le Monde, 22; Le Populaire, 20. Many of these were purely token consignments.

²⁰ Le Monde, Sept. 15–16, 1960. M. Lacoste once seized Le Monde for “accusing parachutists of a murder they did not commit.” The paper had mentioned, in a sober account of a punitive expedition following an FLN terrorist outrage, that a “girl was killed by stray bullets.” The defense ministry later confirmed this. Lacoste's covert aim was probably to undermine the paper's reputation among readers, depriving them of the chance to read what it had actually said. Le Monde, Jan 8 and 9, 1957.

²¹ Consider the revealing overtones of this letter from the information minister to an editor, “It does indeed appear legitimate to me that directors of a publication which is the object of a seizure should, one way or another, be informed of the reasons for the seizure.” In this case he did not himself know.

²² Audin was a communist university teacher arrested for sheltering an Algerian Communist leader; officially he escaped from custody; unofficially he was murdered by his jailers. Alleg, editor of Alger Républieain described tortures he allegedly suffered in prison in La Question. He escaped, returning eventually to edit the paper again after independence. Djamila Boupacha alleged ehe confessed to planting bombs for the FLN under torture and was raped and otherwise mistreated. In all three cases the government or army prevented legal investigations to establish the full truth.

²³ In other matters there was complete uncertainty. Le Monde once published the same facts on successive days: it was seized in Algeria on the first day but not the second.

²⁴ Le Monde. April 23, 24–25 and June 19–20, 1960; France-Observateur and L'Express, April 22, 1960. Terrenoire singled out these passages: “Between 1957 and 1960 desertion has been, one might say, an affair for the individual conscience”; “What in my eyes nullifies [Jeanson's] action is not the romanticism which accompanies it, nor the fact that it is an avant-garde action necessarily misunderstood by the great majority of people … [but] that it rests on a completely false vision of the relationship which should establish itself between socialism and Algerian nationalism. France-Observateur was indicted, but for quite different comments in its literary criticism; neither paper came to trial.

²⁵ July 1, 1958.

²⁶ Countries of origin were: Tunisia, 24; France, 20; U.A.R., 15; Morocco, 10; Lebanon, Algeria, West Germany, 5; Sudan, Czechoslovakia, 4; Switzerland, 3; East Germany, Spain, Belgium, Communist China, Italy, Kuwait, United States, 1. Fourteen recordings were also banned. Source: Journal Officiel de l'Algérie (later Receuil des Actes Administratifs), Jan. 1, 1955 to July 3, 1962.

²⁷ There were 37 in Spanish; 13 in Polish, 7 in Vietnamese dialects; 5 in Italian; others in Arabic, Chinese, English, German, Georgian, Portuguese, Belorussian, Russian; also French originating in Belgium, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Spain, Cameroon, Portugal, and Indo-China. Source: J. O. (Lois et Décrets), 1955–62.

²⁸ Cf. Le Monde, June 21, 1963.

²⁹ French newspapers require official permission to increase prices. The government argued that the proposed rise would upset the price index. Cf. Le Monde, Nov. 8 and 14, 1956. The suit arose from an unhappily prescient article by Prof. Duverger on the dangers of increasing the administrative and political role of the military in Algeria. M. André Morice persuaded a parachutist organization to sue for libel, and his successor launched a fresh action when the parachutists were held to lack standing; it failed. Le Monde, July 20 and 30, Sept. 28, 1957.

³⁰ The Mollet government had granted AFP a relatively liberal statut, which without entirely freeing it from official pressures went far to remove suspicion that it was “governmental” like the old Havas. Cf. L'Echo, April 5 and 20, 1960; Le Monde, April 10–11, 12, 16, 27, 1960.

³¹ “Serait puni d'emprisonnement de 1 à 5 ans quiconque aura cherché à jeter le discrédit sur l'action de l'armée, en rapportant des faits, actes ou propos de nature, à nuire à l'honneur de l'armée.” that is, even the most strictly factual and sober report of military excess would be criminal.

³² Le Monde, Aug. 2, 4, 6, 7–8, 12 and Sept. 17, 23, 25–6, 1960.

³³ See my “French Experience of Exceptional Powers in 1961,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 25 (Feb. 1963)Google Scholar. The presidential Decision authorized suppression of “certain writings” supporting subversion or revealing secret military or administrative information. At May 31, 1963, when the powers lapsed, twenty newsletters had been banned, including several which reappeared under slightly differing titles.

³⁴ The record of the superior courts in press cases was generally more liberal. See notably, cases involving L'Echo du Centre (Le Monde, May 11, 1956); a Guadaloupe paper (ibid, Sept. 23, 1959); Rivarol (ibid, Nov. 5, 1959); C'est à dire (L'Echo, July 5, 1960); Le Canard Enchaîné (Le Monde, Jan 11, 1963.)

³⁵ Notable exceptions: protests by Malraux, Mauriac, Sartre and R. Martin du Gard at seizure of La Question (Le Monde, April 17, 1958); academic criticism of the harassing of Prof. Marrou for an article in Le Monde (ibid, April 14, 1956); protest meetings at the arrest of Roger Stéphane (ibid, April 8, 1955).

³⁶ Le Figaro, quoted by L'Echo March 15, 1958; L'Echo, March 15, 1959. However, L'Echo was an early critic of some seizures and defended Le Monde.

³⁷ Cf. La Presse Française, Oct-Nov. 1954; Oct. 1956. Cf. Le Monde, Feb. 13, 1960.

³⁸ April 10 and March 25, 1962. The tribute should have included Le Canard Enchaîné, the only other paper which consistently criticized seizures of friend and foe. For an extraordinarily petty victimization of Le Canard's directrice, see Le Monde, July 4, 1963.

³⁹ For analysis of press coverage of certain events see Presse-Actualité, Dec., 1957 (internment camps); ibid, Jan. 1961 (de Gaulle in Algeria); ibid, June 1961 (putsch); ibid, Apr.-May 1962 (Paris demonstrations); Les Temps Modernes Dec. 1959 (Audin trial). An example: Le Parisien Libéré is reported to have written, “Maître William Lévy, secretary of the Algiers socialist federation was killed yesterday. His son had already been killed by the FLN.” But Lévy was murdered by OAS.

⁴⁰ The Journal was always the most reserved: the Dépêche the most enthusiastic. Cf. these headlines: ETAT DE SIEGE EN ALGERIE où l'armée a pris le pouvoir (Journal); L'ARMEE PREND LE POUVOIR POUR GARDER L'ALGERIE PRANÇAISE (Dépêche.) Dernière Heure's forte was false news.

⁴¹ Alain de Sérigny was tried for fomenting sedition in 1960. He was acquitted—rightly—for several reasons. The prosecution based its case on 185 articles from L'Echo d'Alger, mostly published in January 1960. No single article directly constituted provocation. The prosecution was reduced to reading article after article, expounding amateurishly the significance of headlines, type, page position and other make-up details. The attempt was clearly impossible; the success of such a prosecution would have had highly alarming implications for press freedom. FNPF rejected the notion that “guilty intent” might “appear independently of the text of an article, in the presentation or the size of headline,” but its derision is unlikely to convince anyone acquainted with modern propaganda techniques or who has read the issues of L'Echo d'Alger. The trial is reported in La Presse Française, March 1961 and in Sérigny's, Un Procès (Paris, Table Ronde, 1961)Google Scholar.

⁴² I propose no alternative for Algeria. Theoretically the response to the quasi-monopoly of the diehard press was tighter censorship, strict limitation of seizures of the mainland press and a competing government paper. But by the time governments were prepared to stand up to the diehards they could probably not have executed such a policy. Thus many military censors were notoriously sympathetic to the diehards, and Radio Alger was heavily infiltrated by activists throughout the war.