Is it defamatory to highlight the limitations of a survey? the 17thmy The Paris criminal courtroom was due to examine the issue, on Friday, October 4, in a case that pitted the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) against researcher Alexandre Dézé, over comments transcribed in a newspaper article World. The electoral institute having withdrawn forty-eight hours before the hearing, will therefore not rule on the merits.
The article in dispute, dated September 11, 2020, titled “In the face of the competition, CNews is committed to uninhibited discourse,” analyzed the style of the CNews news channel and its positioning compared to competing channels. He took as an example the program “L’Heure des pros” hosted by Pascal Praud, dedicated on September 2, 2020 to the results of a survey carried out by the IFOP to charlie hebdo on the occasion of the opening of the trial for the attacks of January 7, 2015.
In this study titled “Right to blasphemy, to caricatures, to freedom of expression… Are the French still “Charlie”? “, In particular, we learned that a quarter of Muslims under the age of 25 did not condemn the attacks of January 7, 2015. To carry out this survey, two samples were constituted: the first composed of 1,020 people representative of the entire population residing in France, the second from a sample of 515 people who declare themselves Muslim.
Asked in the article. WorldProfessor of political science at the University of Montpellier Alexandre Dézé, a survey specialist, estimated that“With such a small sample of 515 people, this survey has no value and [que] Their conclusions are questionable. The law makes it impossible to constitute a reliable sample due to the absence of official data on the population studied, he then stressed. “a delirious methodological weakness and, at the same time, an undeniable belief that these surveys are science”.
“SLAPP Procedure”
These are the comments that gave rise to the complaint of the IFOP for defamation. Justice will not be able to decide four years later, due to the withdrawal of the institute due to a formal defect, as the person who filed the complaint – in this case the president of the IFOP supervisory board – was not legally justified. when doing so.
Before the judge, however, the discussion focused on the abusive nature of the procedure initiated. “The incriminated statements are those made by a specialist in the subject of surveys who writes articles, books, participates in conferences, teaches courses where researchers from institutes including the IFOP regularly participate”M recalled.my David Mendel, lawyer for Mr. Dézé. In 2022, the professor published a work titled Ten lessons about political polls (De Boeck).
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