Journalists and the “ligue du Lol” scandal. Professional standards and the alteration of sexism

This article explores the processes of journalistic production and the discourses of journalists confronted with the “ligue du LOL” scandal in a national newsroom that presents itself as progressive on social issues, in the specific post #MeToo context of the late 2010s in France. We show that this episode put routine journalistic framing to the test, since the perpetrators of violence were socially very close to the journalists in the newsroom studied, and could not resort to the routine forms of altering the perpetrators of sexist and sexual violence. While we might have expected journalists to produce new professional norms in the context of the unprecedented visibility of feminism, the survey shows instead that, in order to deal successfully with this scandal and to distance the perpetrators, journalists reaffirm existing professional norms and distance themselves from those of the accused.