Series of Appealing Scandals
Sarkozy's government has also dropped a series of appealing scandals in Canard's lap. In one case, a state secretary spent €12,000 of French taxpayer money on cigars. Another state secretary used fake measurements and the help of a fellow party member to secure a construction permit for his vacation house in St. Tropez.
A journalist for Canard photographed the property, checked the floor plan and square footage and spent two weeks sifting through documents at the local land registry office. The resulting exposé led to the state secretary's resignation -- a rarity in France, a country where the press has long cultivated an unhealthy proximity to the powerful.
It is also a country in which the largest private television network, TF1, belongs to a friend of the president and the government television network, France 2, has to fear for its existence when its reporting is overly critical. The large daily newspapers have been losing influence for years. The ailing Le Monde, for example, has seen its circulation steadily decline, while the once combatively leftist Libération barely manages to publish 120,000 copies a day. Le Figaro, the third national daily newspaper of any significance, is owned by industrialist Serge Dassault, a close friend of Sarkozy.
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