KEY POINTS:
The magazine Paris-Match altered an agency photograph of President Nicolas Sarkozy on holiday in the United States to make him look thinner, a rival magazine will report today.
Paris-Match - whose parent company is controlled by Sarkozy's close friend Arnaud Lagardere - air-brushed away the President's "love handles", L'Express will report.
The previous editor of Paris-Match was reportedly fired for dwelling on the problems in the Sarkozy marriage. Since then the magazine has become an unashamed fan magazine of the President and his wife, Cecilia, in recent months.
In its edition of August 9, the magazine published a photograph of President Sarkozy stripped to the waist while canoeing with his nine-year-old son Louis. The photograph of Sarkozy's silhouette is admirably svelte. But in the original Reuters photograph, published by L'Express, Sarkozy has a roll of fat around his waist.
Since becoming President, Sarkozy, 51, has cultivated the image of a youthful, all-action leader who jogs daily. Paris-Match admitted that it had tampered with the photograph. "The position of the boat exaggerated this protuberance," Paris-Match said. "When we reduced the shadows, the correction was exaggerated by the printing process."
Sarkozy has been accused by political opponents of taking a "Berlusconi-like" hold on the French media. Several magazines and the most-watched TV channel, TF1, are owned or controlled by his friends or allies.
His two-week US holiday in a luxury compound on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire was, nonetheless, something of a media disaster for the President: it emerged that the holiday was being paid for by billionaire friends; Mrs Sarkozy failed to turn up for a picnic with US President George W. Bush and family in Maine; and, at one point, President Sarkozy jumped aboard a media launch to remonstrate with photographers who were following him and his family.
- Independent
