On the morning of 8 June this year, Henri d’Anselme heard a commotionin an Annecy playground. The 24-year-old Frenchman then saw something horrific: a man with a knife stabbing babies and toddlers in front of their hysterical mothers. D’Anselme did what we all like to imagine we would have done in similar circumstances: he intervened.
Footage captured on mobile phones showed d’Anselme chasing the assailant, distracting him until the police arrived. It should have been a straightforward story for the media: a striking demonstration of good confronting evil, and that was the narrative chosen by most newspapers and broadcasters. But not all. There was a problem for one or two left-wing newspapers, not to mention the bitter-and-twisted brigade on social media: d’Anselme’s religion.
