Media seduced by tales of sex and power

LET’S talk about sex. In Britain and France, they’ve been talking about little else. Across the Irish Sea, the travails of footballer Ryan Giggs have dominated media discourse such that the fall-out from his extra-marital affair has led to a potential constitutional crisis.

France is not so much talking about sex as power. Since the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn for attempted rape, the spotlight has been on a media that apparently turned a blind eye for years to the politician’s attitude to women.

On one side of the English channel, the media is obsessed with the trivial. On the other side, in France, the media has been ignoring one of its primary functions — holding the powerful to account.