PARIS — Maybe it was the suspect timing of the leaked documents. Or the staggering amount and possibility that some were fake. Or a feeling among the French that, having witnessed how hacking may have altered the American election, they would not fall for the same ploy.
Whatever the reasons, newspapers and broadcasters in France have so far conspicuously avoided reporting any details of what was described on Friday night as a “massive” pre-election hacking attack on Emmanuel Macron’s campaign.
The bereft coverage extended into Monday night, well after a 44-hour legal ban on election reporting surrounding the Sunday vote had lifted.
By then it was clear that the hacked material — regardless of what it might contain — had caused no ill effects on the campaign of Mr. Macron, who won decisively over the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.
The contrast with the United States presidential campaign was sharp: Hacking of Hillary Clinton that was traced to Russia may have played a role in her defeat by Donald J. Trump, but news of the hacking in France was met with silence, disdain and scorn.
The contrast may have been amplified further by the absence of a French equivalent to the thriving tabloid culture in Britain or the robust right-wing broadcast media in the United States, where the Clinton hacking attack generated enormous negative coverage.
“We don’t have a Fox News in France,” said Johan Hufnagel, managing editor of the leftist daily Libération. “There’s no broadcaster with a wide audience and personalities who build this up and try to use it for their own agendas.”
He also said that French voters, with the benefit of hindsight, were suspicious of destabilizing developments like the ones that may have affected the vote in the American presidential election and Britain’s so-called Brexit referendum last June to leave the European Union.
“French voters didn’t want to get into that game,” Mr. Hufnagel said. “They were mentally prepared after Trump and Brexit and the Russians, even if it’s not clear they’re behind it.”
Some Macron supporters initially feared that the reports of the hacking and his inability to respond could be devastating on the eve of voting.
The hacking lit up social media, especially in the United States, where far-right activists have joined together to spread extremist messages in Europe.
On Election Day, the French-language version of Sputnik, the Russian news outlet, played up social media coverage of the leaks.
But the leaks did not get much traction in France, where news outlets respected the blackout. The documents landed at the 11th hour, without time for journalists to scrutinize them before the ban went into effect.
The news media also heeded an admonition by the government’s campaign regulatory body not to publish false news. Mr. Macron’s campaign said that fake documents had been mixed in with authentic ones.
There were also reports that Mr. Macron’s campaign, well aware that it was a hacking target, had deliberately fed hackers false information in responding to phishing emails, which may explain why the leaked data was disseminated late in the campaign.
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