Ten years after the terrorist attack against the weekly, the French support freedom of expression more than ever. This Tuesday, January 7, 2025 marks the tenth anniversary of the attack on Charlie Hebdo perpetrated by the Kouachi brothers and which left 12 dead.
On this occasion, Charlie Hebdo publishes in its special issue a study carried out by Ifop for the Jean Jaurès Foundation on the French relationship with freedom of expression, satire and press caricatures.
62% support freedom of the press.
Among the lessons learned, a notable evolution is observed: 76% of French people surveyed believe that freedom of expression is a fundamental right and that freedom of caricature is one of them, compared to 58% in a previous survey carried out in 2012 by TNS. Sofres.
On the contrary, 24% of those surveyed consider that we cannot say anything under the protection of freedom of expression, compared to 35% in 2012. But the survey also highlights a generational gap: 32% of young people under 35 years old maintain that we cannot say and caricature anything under the pretext of freedom of expression, compared to only 21% of people between 35 and 64 years old.
At the same time, the French are increasingly favorable to the law of July 1881 on freedom of the press, which authorizes the expression of criticism or ridicule against religions: 62% of them support it today, compared to 50% in 2020.
55% of French people also consider that in France the press is free and that Charlie Hebdo did not have to censor itself and was therefore able to publish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006, that is, 4 points more than in a previous Ifop survey published in 2012 (51%).
Since January 2015, the perception that the French have of cartoons has also evolved slightly: 19% of them say that they give more importance to them and to press cartoons since the attacks, 67% give them the same importance while that 14% give them less importance.
For the authors of the study, these figures “contradict the idea that the French are increasingly less mature to understand caricature and increasingly hostile to laughing at topics considered ‘sensitive’.”
Can we laugh at everything? Not for most French people
On the other hand, support for Charlie Hebdo through demonstrations is less present than a few years ago. If in 2020, 80% of French people said – if they met again in January 2015 – that they wanted to participate in the minute of silence organized in tribute to the journalists who were victims of the attack, the proportion is lower (74%) in June of 2024.
Furthermore, 44% said in June 2024 that they wanted to participate in the republican marches organized under the slogan “Je suis Charlie” compared to 53% in August 2020.
The perception of “laughing at everything” has barely changed. 62% of French people consider that today in France we cannot laugh at everything, a proportion similar to that of an OpinionWay survey for Licra carried out in 2015. 38% of them now consider it possible to be able to laugh at everything in France. compared to 37% ten years ago.
The truth is that almost seven out of ten French people (69%) enjoy reading newspaper cartoons. And if there were no more cartoons in the press tomorrow, a large majority of French people (65%) indicate that they would miss them.
The survey was carried out among a sample of 1,000 people, representative of the French population aged 18 and over. The representativeness of the sample was guaranteed using the quota method (sex, age, profession of the interviewee) after stratification by region and agglomeration category. The interviews were conducted using a self-administered online questionnaire from May 31 to June 1, 2024.
Source: BFM TV
