Sarkozy attacks French news agency

French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the country's leading news agency Agence France-Presse are engaged in an escalating dispute. First, Sarkozy's party accused AFP of "censorship" for not publishing one of its press releases. Ten days later, a government spokesman urged the agency to create a service dedicated to publishing all press releases, a proposal scorned by the Paris-based press watchdog, Reporters without Borders. It said the media would be nothing more than a bulletin board. AFP's chief executive Pierre Louette says: "There have always been occasional squabbles between the government and the press, but what is new is the very public way this has happened and the fact that the president himself got involved." (Via IHT)