Doctors and media coverage seen from the panorama of case law from the Conseil d’État, the court of cassation for disciplinary rulings by the French medical profession.

Doctors are free to express themselves in the media. They may wish to make themselves known personally, promote their work, use their reputation, take part in radio or television programs or, more broadly, in public debate, on the strength of their experience and status as key witnesses to public health issues, with scientific knowledge and the trust that citizens place in them. However, this freedom is conditional on the doctor’s compliance with the code of ethics enshrined in the French Public Health Code, which governs this freedom and sets out a series of obligations inherent in being a doctor. This commentary is intended to illustrate, based on a number of decisions by the Conseil d’État—the court of cassation for decisions handed down in disciplinary matters by the courts of the Ordre des Médecins—how a body of jurisprudence has developed that interprets the texts of the Code of Ethics as requirements in terms of health protection and the physician’s responsibility, the dignity of the profession and confraternity between practitioners, medical confidentiality imposed by law, and the patient’s trust in the physician. And it is this notion of trust that seems to be the unifying theme: it lies at the heart of the very special relationship that is initially forged between doctor and patient, and then, more broadly, it appears in the implicit social pact between doctor as holder of scientific authority and citizen-patient.