'Le Monde' says it will sue authors over 'tissue of lies'

Copies of a book accusing the respected French newspaper Le Monde of "hating France" and trying to run the country, not just write about it, sold out within a few hours in leading Paris bookshops yesterday.

Le Monde said it respected freedom of speech and had not tried to block publication of La Face Cachée du Monde (the hidden face of Le Monde) but the newspaper dismissed the book as a "tissue of lies" and exaggerations, "motivated by personal hatred".

Le Monde said it would bring proceedings for defamation against the authors, Pierre Péan and Philippe Cohen, as well as their publishers and the magazine L'Express, which printed extracts last week.

The joint authors said that they would await their day in court "with serenity".

The 632-page book, published by Mille et Une Nuits priced €24 (£16) claims the trio that has run Le Monde since 1994 – the director of publication, Jean-Marie Colombani, the editorial director, Edwy Plenel and the chairman of the supervising board, Alain Minc – have turned a once stately, centre-left newspaper into a vehicle for their political and financial ambitions.

M. Colombani and M. Plenel are accused, among other things, of promoting the careers of right-wing politicians such as Edouard Balladur and Charles Pasqua (both since failed) and trying to undermine the former socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin.

M. Colombani, who is Corsican, is also accused of becoming excessively involved in M. Jospin's failed plans to devolve limited independence to the island and using the newspaper to leak information preventing the arrest of violent Corsican nationalists.

M. Plenel is accused of being a Trotskyist and a CIA agent simultaneously (with little evidence, other than a posthumously reported remark by the late President François Mitterrand.) M. Minc and M. Colombani are accused of embroiling Le Monde in a series of secret business deals and links, which run counter to the newspaper's declared belief in business ethics and transparency.

Other French newspapers – and journalists at Le Monde, speaking off the record – said that the book took a good case, on some points, and spoilt it by exaggeration and personalised attacks. They said the attack showed clear signs of being two different books, uneasily joined together. (The two authors had originally set out independently to write books on the newspaper.)

One book was an investigation, at least partly justified, into Le Monde's attempts to become a political and economic force in the land, as much by manipulation behind the scenes and by reporting or commentary. The other was a lament on the fact that the new editorial team at Le Monde had brightened up the wordy, often inpenetrable, moralising, knee-jerk leftist newspaper of the period from 1950 to 1994 and turned it into a more independent-minded, pithily written and brightly presented newspaper.