FT amends police deployment figure in France protest coverage

The Financial Times has corrected a significant numerical error in its reporting on France’s political turmoil, acknowledging that 80,000 police officers were deployed for a day of nationwide protests on September 10, not 800,000 as originally stated.

The mistake appeared in an article detailing President Emmanuel Macron’s appointment of Sébastien Lecornu as prime minister, following the ousting of François Bayrou in a confidence vote over his austerity program. In covering the political fallout, the report noted that tens of thousands of officers would be mobilized to secure demonstrations. Instead, the figure was inflated tenfold, inadvertently suggesting a deployment larger than France’s total police force.

While the revised figure still represents a substantial show of force, the original error risked exaggerating both the scale of state response and the level of anticipated unrest. In France, where relations between security services and demonstrators are fraught after years of protest movements — from the gilets jaunes to pension strikes — such numbers carry heavy symbolic weight.

The correction, appended at the end of the article, makes clear that 80,000 officers were called upon, a figure consistent with previous nationwide mobilizations. Yet the discrepancy illustrates how a misplaced digit can distort perceptions of political stability and government resolve.

For Macron, Lecornu’s appointment was meant to steady his minority government and reassure both markets and allies. Framing that move against a backdrop of 800,000 police created an image of a presidency under siege, rather than one managing routine — if disruptive — demonstrations.

As is often the case, the correction will reach fewer readers than the headline figures already shared across social media. And in a volatile political climate, such distortions, however accidental, risk amplifying the very sense of crisis they seek to describe.