Macron Opens Year Pulling No Punches With Journalists, or Anyone<br />5, 2018<br />PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron met with French journalists this week in what<br />is an annual tradition by French presidents to extend a New Year’s greeting.<br />His grand vision for France’s role, as expressed in the New Year’s Eve address, harks back to de Gaulle, a leader to which the French press sometimes compares him: "A strong country with a universal pull which, because it is stronger, produces more,<br />and can therefore ensure solidarity at home and make humanist demands abroad," Mr. Macron said.<br />The irony was not lost on the assembled press corps<br />that Mr. Macron, in fact, owes most of his amazing political good fortune to bold French journalism: it was the weekly Le Canard Enchaîné that torpedoed his principal opponent — and the otherwise likely winner of the 2017 presidential election — François Fillon.<br />For now, he is the undisputed master of French politics<br />and his absolute self-confidence — critics say, arrogance — is undaunted, when it comes to French journalism, its labor code, migration or almost anything else.<br />Adding insult to injury, the French president then announced a new, if redundant, law repressing "fake news"<br />— hardly the currency of the professionals in the room, and a problem already addressed in French statutes.<br />Mr. Macron was hinting at the real disruptions he has brought about in French political life — in employment<br />and fiscal policy so far, with other big jolts promised soon.
