President's Wife Attacks Press ... in the Press

Nicolas Sarkozy's new wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, yesterday took the unprecedented step of writing an opinion piece in a national newspaper on the ethics of journalism, attacking reporters who took gossip for fact and who used anonymous sources.

The article follows a scandal over a text message the president was reported to have sent to his ex-wife. The scandal has gripped France for weeks since Le Nouvel Observateur's website reported that Sarkozy, eight days before his whirlwind marriage to Bruni, sent a text message to his ex-wife Cécilia saying: "If you come back, I'll call it all off."

The president took unprecedented legal action against the magazine, launching a criminal case accusing the reporter of falsification and of handling falsified documents, which can incur a three-year prison sentence. Journalists protested that he was trying to intimidate them.

Last month Bruni-Sarkozy caused outrage when she drew comparisons between the text message report and the denunciation of Jews during the second world war.

Yesterday she wrote a piece in Le Monde announcing that her husband had dropped the court action because the reporter had apologized to her. Under the title End Calumny, the former model turned folk singer wrote: "I have no ethics lesson to deliver to anyone," before attacking journalists who reported gossip and cited unnamed sources. She insisted her husband had not attacked the freedom of the press.

"If from now on rumor feeds information, if fantasies feed scoops, where are we heading?" she wrote. "If great newspapers stop separating the facts from the gossip, who will do it?"

Airy Routier, the journalist who wrote the text message article, said yesterday he stood by his story. He had apologized to Bruni-Sarkozy only over any "hurt" the story had caused her. He acknowledged that he never saw the text message, but said he received the information from a strong source and accused the president of trying to cow the press. Cécilia has denied receiving such a message.

Ending the SMS controversy could help to draw a line under Sarkozy's public love life. His ruling center-right party took a battering in local elections at the weekend, partly due to voters' distaste for his love of luxury and his public courtship of Bruni. In the past few days he has begun to restyle himself as a sober "father of the nation" figure, unveiling war memorials and visiting resistance monuments.

His former wife is this weekend expected to marry Richard Attias, an events manager for whom she briefly left Sarkozy in 2005.