Word: canard
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When it comes to investigative reporting, most French newspapers and magazines waddle along in step with their favorite political party, or shy away whenever the government frowns. A dazzling and from the government's standpoint most damnable exception is the weekly paper Le Canard Enchaîné-literally, The Chained Duck-which pursues scandal with all the gusto of a Gallic gourmet tucking into a baba au rhum. These days the Chained Duck is flapping its wings triumphantly, and no wonder: dangling from its bill is the meticulously aloof French President, Valery Giscard d'Estaing...
...last two issues, Le Canard charged that Giscard, both when he was Finance Minister and after he became President in 1974, had graciously accepted 50 carats in diamonds-the first 30 alone valued at $240,000-from Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the sadistic former "Emperor" of the Central African Republic...
Founded in 1915 "to kill with ridicule those who profess the virtue of war," the left-leaning Canard (circ. 550,000) has skewered generations of French leaders with needle wit and wicked cartoons...
...closed down during World War II, but before and after, during the hapless Third and the revolving-door Fourth Republic, stirred its editors to punishing glee. Le Canard also thrives on serious controversy. Says Chief Editor Roger Fressoz (pen name: Andre Ribaud): "We began doing more investigative reporting with the Algerian War, when French citizens began to ask for more information...
This decade Le Canard has been more enterprising. It revealed that the Gaullist resistance hero Jacques Chaban-Delmas had used legal loopholes to avoid paying income tax for three years, virtually killing his bid for the presidency in 1974. The Duck also unearthed some questionable financial dealings by the murdered Prince Jean de Broglie, a man with close ties to the Giscard administration, and printed the income tax dossiers of both Giscard and Aviation Tycoon Marcel Dassault. The government paid Le Canard a bumbling tribute one night when its agents were discovered in the paper's offices trying...