Rue89 was co-founded by Pierre Haski, Pascal Riché, Arnaud Aubron, Michel Lévy-Provençal, and Laurent Mauriac. Libération, which had been bought back by Édouard de Rothschild, was then in the turmoil of a crisis, which included a plan of downsizing and the voluntary resignation of a number of its long-standing employees. As soon as 14 May 2007, Rue89 published its first scoop, taken up by the rest of the French press, which concerned the censorship of an article which was to be published by Le Journal du Dimanche, owned by Arnaud Lagardère, who is close to Sarkozy. The suppressed article spoke about the abstention of Cécilia Sarkozy, the wife of the new President Nicolas Sarkozy, at the second round of the Presidential election.On 5 September 2007, Pascal Riché revealed that Alexis Debat, a collaborator of The National Interest and of ABC News, had signed a false interview of Barack Obama, published in Politique Internationale. The article underlined a number of incoherencies concerning Debat's alleged Curriculum Vitae.[1] Rue89's scoop was taken up by The Washington Post, and Debat resigned from The National Interest