Le Monde—the French newspaper of record—explains why it took it two days to confirm the death of Luc Montagnier.
There they say that they needed a sure confirmation of the fact, which they have not been able to secure from the hospital, nor from associates or close members of the personality, nor from official sources, until, well, two days later, from the city hall, meaning when basically everybody there, from the secretary to the cleaning lady if she was around, already knew it.
Could no one in between tip-off Le Monde? This even though reports piled up one after the other from increasingly visible and recognized people? Are Henrion-Caude and Didier Raoult really better informed than the leading French information outlet? Trusting these people instead, everybody thus knew it with more or less certainty since France Soir had announced it, well over 24h before the news eventually reached the administration. France Soir acquired much credit and reliability as a result which Le Monde lost in greater proportion. This allowed this magical moment of people paying their tribute to the resting soul in the forceful and complete silence of those that had to wait till after the popular homage to start with their disparaging comments, already out of date, on top of being out of tone. Few famous people ascended to eternity in such a dignified, glorious and transcendent way, in a divinely imposed respectful silence of the commentators, who are now left to commenting their own lack of comments.
A recurrent excuse for the fact, trying to paint this shameful failure into a virtue, is that Montagnier and his surrounding did not facilitate the task, possibly even hindering it and favouring its exclusivity for the other journal. If that is true, what a genius insight beyond the grave, what a bravado, what revenge, what a lesson, what a mastermind move from someone that we are explained was senile and out of touch with reality. Can you defeat one of the most powerful, acrimonious and insidious entities to control the narrative, the media, and really be that obtuse? The demonstration has been made, quite on the contrary, that the brain is always several days ahead of the feet.
And the fight was fair, as a prestigious journal, a talented journalist or a competent source collecting information, which you'd imagine Le Monde should be among other things, would have no difficulty in confirming such information, however close it is to the topic itself, in particular after it had been officially published elsewhere. Of course, if your ideological hatred is such as to refuse to grant the slightest credit to, beyond your competitors, let us even agree for enemies, then you are left with either your alternative resources or, if you don't have any, your incompetence.
I indeed do not think that the goal was to boycott the news, which came later in the sparsity and nature of the coverage. This delay, instead, is a failure to acquire information in a timely manner, even when it is widely circulating. That they lost the respect of the deceased, once an international hero, forever engraved in the history of the most prestigious award ever bestowed to human achievement, is not the problem, just a clue as to how low their standing has fallen. For how should we trust this Newspaper when it is telling us, at the same time, of the future plans of Putin to invade Ukraine, when they are not able to figure out what's happening in a Parisian hospital? Have they confirmed the alleged calendar of the Russian invasion with several independent, trusted and official sources before circulating it ad nauseam? Do these include the Kremlin, the town house of Moscow or its oblasts and the army headquarters?
Or has Le Monde, in its blind obedience to official doctrines, lost any sense of what information is, of what a scoop is, of what time and timeliness mean in this business of painting a live picture of the World as it breathes, or ceases to?