Far from being the “lid”, he himself provided that extra head of steam to blow up the whole cauldron. Kempski’s scoop was published with maximum prominence on 18 January. At that time the French Press was still preoccupied with news of the new “heavy” franc which had been launched on 1 January to replace the old franc at a ratio of one to 100, by the Jaccoud murder trial in Geneva, by the tragic death of Albert Camus, killed in a car accident, and by the appalling disaster on the Riviera where, on 3 December, the Fréjus dam had burst, killing over 300 people and causing milliards of francs’ worth of damage. But the bombe Massu swept all else aside almost as devastatingly as the flood waters at Fréjus.

XREF: Relates to journalism history and how a single story can dominate the news cycle despite competing major headlines.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1089