Restraint in France

Thirteen months ago, before lunch with three prominent journalists, French President Georges Pompidou remarked: "To each his troubles. Nixon has Watergate, and as for me, I am going to die." None of his three companions--Franc,oise Giroud of L' Express, Pierre Viansson-Ponte of Le Monde and Roland Faure of L 'Aurore--used the information directly or indirectly while Pompidou lived. Nor did Giroud publish the news that Pompidou was suffering from multiple myeloma (bone-marrow cancer), a fact she had learned prior to the lunch last spring.

That kind of self-censorship, which American and British newsmen find all but incredible, was typical of how many French publications and the government-run television network handle the medical secrets of great personages. In the U.S., the mental and physical health of recent Presidents and presidential candidates has been the subject of close scrutiny. In France, circumspection goes beyond the grave; three days after Pompidou died last week, the official cause of death still had not been disclosed.

One reason is that the French have more built-in respect for the privacy of their leaders than Americans do. In the case of the French press, that delicacy has material aspects. The government controls the supply of paper and since World War II has granted the press important tax concessions. Whatever the motive, most French newsmen managed to ignore the ail too visible symptoms of Pompidou's ill health until the President's meeting with Richard Nixon in Iceland last May. When American journalists reported on Pompidou's sickly appearance and speculated on the cause, French publications began to take note of it. Revealing photos were widely published, and some commentators openly called on the government to provide information about the President's health. None was forthcoming, and few reporters did much independent digging. The dread word cancer remained unpublished.

Most restrained of all was the government TV network ORTF, which virtually ignored the illness for a year, avoided using unflattering pictures and did not even prepare a film obituary. The coverage on all three government channels on the night that Pompidou died consisted largely of pictures and classical music.

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