When President Emmanuel Macron appointed 34-year-old Gabriel Attal as prime minister on Monday (January 9), headlines in France almost all centred on Mr Attal’s age - highlighting a key difference between coverage in the French and much international media.
In contrast to age, many US newspapers included Mr Attal’s homosexuality in their headlines, as well as his age.
Both could be seen as a watershed moment; Mr Attal is both the youngest prime minister of the Fifth Republic - and the first openly gay one.
Outlets including People, The New York Times and the Associated Press included this reference. Others such as CNN, and UK-based outlets the BBC and The Guardian stuck to age only.
However, French media overwhelmingly focused on the politician’s young age only, and in many cases underplayed this second ‘first moment’ in French politics.
Mr Attal himself even seemed to downplay the detail.
“The youngest president ever nominated the youngest prime minister ever,” he said in his first ever speech as PM, also framing Mr Macron’s choice around age - Mr Macron was 39 when he became president in 2017.
Mr Attal used age as a way to show Mr Macron’s “audacity” - and only referenced his homosexuality as an aside.
What does this difference in focus suggest about the French media, if anything? The Connexion spoke to two members of both the gay and French journalism community to shed light on the question.
“There is a mixture of awkwardness and wishful thinking among French media and political commentators,” said Thomas Vampouille, editor-in-chief of Têtu, France’s longest-standing LGBTQI+ newspaper, suggesting that political commentators have claimed that Mr Attal’s sexuality is already ‘well-known and accepted’ as a way of avoiding the issue.
Mr Vampouille was invited on several TV shows to comment on the nomination, where he said he had witnessed “a sort of an embarrassment among his white heterosexual” peers when asked about that aspect.
He also noted that not a single French newspaper included Mr Attal’s sexuality as part of their headline, despite it representing almost an unprecedented political event. Mr Attal is only the seventh prime minister to be openly gay in the world, and the first ever in France.
“French media always see homosexuality as sexual content, while American newspapers understand it as part of an individual’s identity,” he added.
Private life
This could partly explain the French media’s silence behind Mr Attal’s homosexuality, Mr Vampouille said, as many consider it to be part of someone’s private life, hence a “non-issue”.
But Mr Vampouille said the absence of coverage was notable, because “this is a major political event”.
“It’s the first time in France and very rare across the world,” he said. “It is a subject when it does not happen and [seems to have] turned into a non-subject now it has.”
Frédéric Martel, an openly gay French sociologist and an expert on the United States and the gay community, highlighted that gender would normally be highlighted in news coverage, so not mentioning sexuality could be seen as a curious omission.
“The French media had no problem highlighting that Ms Borne was the second woman elected prime minister,” he said.
“And the same political commentators had no problem fueling a rumour about her supposed homosexuality. That was not considered ‘private life’ then,” said Mr Vampouille.
Ms Borne later gave magasine and website Têtu an interview to refute the rumour.
Mr Martel, 56, was among the few on Twitter to highlight Mr Attal’s openly gay stance in a tweet following the nomination.
“For someone of my generation, it is a watershed moment. It has always been unthinkable.”
However, he faced a barrage of homophobic comments below his tweet simply for mentioning it. “I deleted 250 homophobic responses,” he said.
Outing
Figures of the far, alt or conservative right have often appeared to try and use Mr Attal’s homosexuality to attack Mr Macron.
Guillaume Roquette, editor-in-chief of Le Figaro Magazine, suggested yesterday live on LCI that Mr Macron’s choice was motivated by Mr Attal’s sexual orientation. The channel has since deleted the segment.
The argument is often used as a tool by the conservative to far-right as a way to denounce what it sees as the rampant influence of ‘wokeism’ and the ‘LGBT lobby’.
The suggestion that Mr Attal’s sexuality helps him politically is actually how his own sexual orientation was revealed. He was ‘outed’ - meaning publicly revealing someone’s homosexuality, often against one’s will - in a book in 2018.
Juan Branco, a lawyer, far-left TV personality, and a former classmate of Mr Attal, suggested in the book that Mr Attal had climbed the political ladder thanks to his relationship with Stéphane Séjourné, a European MP.
A few days later, Mr Attal was invited by Mr Martel on his Soft Power radio show on France Culture to discuss a topic unrelated to the revelation. Mr Martel said they talked about it off-the-record only. Mr Attal himself revealed his homosexuality publicly several months later in an interview.
Both Le Point and Le Monde used Mr Attal’s nomination as prime minister to inform readers that the couple - Mr Attal and Mr Séjourné - are now separated.
Overall, Mr Martel said that he believed mentioning Mr Attal’s sexuality in newspaper headlines would be a good thing.
“I would have liked the French press to put his homosexuality in the headline,” he said. “It will eventually come thanks to the position [of outlets] such as the New York Times.”
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