In its 75-year historical past, Le Journal du Dimanche, France’s main Sunday newspaper, has nearly by no means missed publication. But its operations floor to a halt this week after an editor with a far-right observe document was abruptly appointed simply forward of a takeover of the paper by the French billionaire Vincent Bolloré, prompting a mass walkout by journalists and igniting a firestorm in French media and political circles.
Mr. Bolloré, an industrialist typically described as France’s Rupert Murdoch, has been steadily constructing a conservative media empire, anchored by a Fox-style news community, CNews. The appointment of the editor, Geoffroy Lejeune, who was previously at a far-right journal that was fined for racist insults, raised considerations that considered one of France’s most distinguished newspapers may very well be reworked right into a right-wing platform.
“For the first time in France since the Liberation, a large national media will be run by a far-right personality,” mentioned an open letter printed this week in Le Monde, France’s greatest newspaper, signed by 400 teachers, economists, cultural figures and left-leaning politicians backing the JDD, because the paper is thought. “This is a dangerous precedent which concerns us all,” the letter mentioned.
Journalists on the JDD, identified for its interviews with authorities leaders and largely centrist coverage evaluation, voted on Thursday to lengthen their walkout to protest the hiring of Mr. Lejeune, 34, who was fired final yr from the journal Valeurs Actuelles amid a dispute with the proprietor over editorial path. The paper didn’t publish Sunday, solely the second time since its founding in 1948, and on Thursday night the web site was nonetheless main with news from final week.
Over 1,000 individuals gathered at a theater in Paris this week at a rally organized by Reporters Without Borders, which condemned what it mentioned was an effort by Mr. Bolloré to say shareholder management over a newsroom.
France’s tradition minister, Rima Abdul Malak, weighed in on Twitter. “Legally, the JDD can become what it wants, as long as it respects the law,” she wrote. “But as far as our Republic’s values are concerned, how can one not be alarmed?”
The episode has turned a recent highlight on Mr. Bolloré, a politically related industrialist who hails from traditionalist Catholic circles in Brittany. His business empire consists of the worldwide promoting company Havas, and he has a controlling stake within the media conglomerate Vivendi. He cast his fortune in logistics and was generally known as the King of Africa for the huge business dealings that earned him riches in former French colonies.
After a corruption inquiry into accusations that he helped the presidents of two African nations achieve energy in alternate for profitable business contracts, Mr. Bolloré shifted focus lately to his news media properties, which in France are usually a essential avenue for the very wealthy to affect political elections. Over four-fifths of privately owned newspapers and TV and radio stations in France are owned by French or overseas billionaires or financiers. French state-backed tv and radio stations maintain dominant positions within the media panorama.
Pending approval of European Commission antitrust authorities, Mr. Bolloré is about this summer time to safe his majority stake in Lagardère, a conglomerate that owns the JDD and Paris Match journal. It would make him head of one of many largest broadcast and print empires in France.
Arnaud Lagardère, the conglomerate’s chief govt, who primarily now stories to Mr. Bolloré, sought this week to assuage considerations over the hiring of Mr. Lejeune, who has not issued any public statements aside from a transient Twitter message saying he was honored to take the helm. Mr. Lagardère mentioned the hiring determination, which he insisted was his alone, was purely a business alternative and never supposed to alter the editorial line.
“This fantasy that the extreme right is working its way into the paper is not real,” he advised the newspaper Le Figaro. But he added: “The JDD must also know how to adapt to changes in the world.”
Mr. Lejeune wrote on Twitter final week that his appointment was a “huge honor” and that he would put “all my energy into the success of this challenge.” He didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Under Mr. Bolloré, who usually avoids interviews and didn’t reply to a request for remark, a number of mainstream news shops have been reworked into right-leaning platforms that analysts say align together with his political convictions and a private concern that Christian tradition is eroding in France. He lately purchased a flailing Christian newspaper with fewer than 10,000 subscribers, La France Catholique, with the purpose of rising it.
The greatest shift has taken place at CNews, as soon as a 24-hour news community, the place many journalists had been ousted or resigned in protest when Mr. Bolloré grew to become proprietor in 2015. Their replacements shifted the main target to opinion segments and debates over hot-button points, like crime, immigration and Islam’s position in France.
The makeover propelled CNews to the top-rated TV spot in France, a rustic that has seen a gentle rise in affect amongst proper and far-right politicians, particularly in final yr’s presidential election.
CNews gave a bullhorn to figures like Éric Zemmour, a best-selling creator identified for far-right nationalism, together with the conspiracy idea of a “great replacement” of white individuals in France by immigrants from Africa. Inspired by Donald J. Trump, Mr. Zemmour grew to become a TV star on CNews and ran towards President Emmanuel Macron and Marine LePen in final yr’s presidential election, in an finally unsuccessful bid.
Similar rightward swings at Mr. Bolloré’s different media holdings, together with a Canal Plus news channel and Europe 1, a top-rated radio station, led to departures of reporters and editors.
So when journalists on the JDD realized of Mr. Lejeune’s appointment — not by an official announcement however through a news report — a revolt broke out within the newsroom.
“Journalists are very worried about media independence,” mentioned Julia Cagé, an economist specializing within the media at Sciences Po, a analysis college in Paris.
“If you look at what happened for the past 10 years, Bolloré has destroyed the media he bought, and used them to push a radical right-wing line, anti-rights for minorities and a Catholic perspective,” she mentioned. “In that sense, he’s become worse than Rupert Murdoch.”
But in a rustic the place right-wing candidates obtained over 30 % of the vote in final yr’s presidential election, Mr. Bolloré’s platforms have stuffed what his supporters say was a political void in a French media panorama dominated by politically appropriate, left-leaning journalists.
“The media space in France is not neutral,” mentioned Dominique Reynié, a professor at Sciences Po and the founding father of Fondapol, a right-leaning assume tank. “If you bring up issues like immigration or Islamism, which really are problems in France, you are badly received by journalists who consider you to be right or extreme right.”
Mr. Lejeune’s appointment was a mirrored image of how France’s media panorama is shifting within the path of “what is happening in France electorally, which is an increasing shift to the right,” Mr. Reynié added. “There is a readership market on that side, which is not reading the left-leaning press.”
That is a wager that Mr. Bolloré appears desirous to take.
“We have other media that is owned by industrialists who don’t interfere with the editorial line, which is not the case with Bolloré,” mentioned Christian Delporte, a media historian on the University of Versailles.
“If he buys media, it’s because he has in mind the desire to influence the political future of the country,” he mentioned. “He is accompanying the rise of the far right to power.”
Source: www.nytimes.com