Christophe Deloire, Champion of Threatened Journalists, Dies at 53
Christophe Deloire, whose nonpartisan organization protecting journalists rescued dissidents from prison and fought for diversity of opinion in the profession around the world, died today. Saturday in Paris. He is 53 years old.
The cause was complications of brain cancer, according to Reporters without bordersmedia group of which he has held the position of general secretary for the past 12 years.
Mr. Deloire, himself a journalist and author, has campaigned publicly and worked behind the scenes to promote press freedom in countries that silence journalists. He helped negotiate the release of people threatened with arrest, imprisonment, or being held hostage.
In 2023, Reporters Without Borders, known by its French acronym RSF, coordinated the secret prison break of Marina Ovsyannikovaa former Russian state television journalist who angered the Kremlin by storming into a live news program in 2022 to denounce the invasion of Ukraine.
Ms. Ovsyannikova was fined and forced to choose between imprisonment and exile. Then, after another public protest, she was placed under house arrest pending trial. On the advice of her lawyer, she fled Russia with her 11-year-old daughter, evading authorities by changing cars several times before trudging through mud to cross the border and make her way to France.
Mr. Deloire also supported the release Olivier Dubois, a French journalist was kidnapped by Islamic extremists in Mali and was detained for nearly two years until his release in 2023.
As leader and spokesman for Paris-based RSF, Mr. Deloire oversaw a program to provide protective equipment and training to Ukrainian journalists after the Russian invasion began, and He established the Journalism Trust Initiative to certify news outlets as a way to help restore public trust in the news media.
In his quest for pluralism in the profession, Mr Deloire was the main opponent of last summer’s appointment Geoffroy Lejeune, a far-right media mogul who is editor-in-chief of Le Journal du Dimanche, France’s only Sunday newspaper.
In 2017, protesting against a car bomb that killed people Daphne Caruana GaliziaMalta’s most famous investigative journalist, Mr. Deloire declared, “The pen conquers fear.”
He also warned that pandemic caused by coronavirus has had a negative impact on freedom of expression, allowing governments to “take advantage of the fact that politics is stalled, the public is stunned and protests are unlikely, to impose measures cannot be implemented in normal times.”
And he protected Julian Assange, whom the United States sought to extradite from Britain after WikiLeaks, the organization he founded, published leaks from military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010.
Reporters Without Borders praised Mr. Deloire as “a tireless defender, on every continent, of the freedom, independence and pluralism of the press, in a context of information chaos.”
“Journalism was the struggle of his life, which he fought with unshakable conviction,” RSF’s statement added.
Christophe Nicolas Deloire was born on May 22, 1971 in Paray-le-Monial, Burgundy, eastern France. His parents, Lucien Deloire and Marie-Annick Chevasson, were both teachers.
After studying at the Higher School of Economic and Commercial Sciences, Mr. Deloire became an investigative reporter covering politics and society for Le Point magazine from 1998 to 2007. He then led the Center de Formation des Journalistes, a professional school in Paris, from 2008 to 2012.
His survivors include his wife, Perrine, and a son, Nathan.
Mr. Deloire worked for public and private television stations and wrote many books, including two with Christophe Dubois: one on Islamic extremism, a bestseller in France. in 2004, and another on sex and politics, published in 2008.
IN “Sexual Politics,” The authors argue that a successful French politician is also a charmer, and that journalists owe their readers and viewers the whole story and all the truth on any issue.
“If tomorrow the people, readers or voters of France accuse us of keeping secrets from each other, of accepting different standards for the powerful than for the humble, what will we say to them? ?” “Our ambition is to tell nothing but the truth — but the whole truth,” Mr. Deloire wrote in the daily Le Monde in 2011. “Our ambition is to tell nothing but the truth — but the whole truth.”
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
