2023-06-25 14:48:00
A Sunday without its Sunday newspaper: several left-wing politicians as well as the Minister of Culture expressed their deep concern about the situation at the JDD, on strike against the arrival of a director marked on the far right .
The editorial staff renewed its strike almost unanimously until next Wednesday, to try to prevent the arrival at the head of the JDD, now controlled by Vincent Bolloré, of Geoffroy Lejeune, just dismissed from Current Values.
The movement paralyzed the website, before preventing the release of the paper edition on Sunday, an extremely rare event in the history of the influential weekly, scrutinized in the political world for its Sunday interviews.
“My Sunday ritual was to wake up with the JDD,” Minister Rima Abdul-Malak said on social media. “I understand the concerns of its editorial staff. In law, the JDD can become what it wants, as long as it respects the law. But for our republican values how not to be alarmed?”, She continued .
A formulation regretted by the boss of Mediapart, Edwy Plenel: “A capitalist who owns a media must not be able to do with it + what he wants +. By not respecting the independence of the editorial staff, he is attacking a fundamental right , freedom of information. In addition, the JDD receives public aid from the State”, he retorted.
Statements which join the main demand of the employees on strike: that the direction gives up appointing Mr. Lejeune director of the drafting.
“The editorial staff of the JDD refuses to be directed by a man whose ideas are in total contradiction with the values of the newspaper,” said the Society of Journalists (SDJ).
They fear that a method already denounced elsewhere in the media controlled by Vincent Bolloré will be repeated: waltz of leaders and interventions on the editorial line, fear that it will switch to the far right, at the cost of a possible haemorrhage of journalists .
Support from the profession
They received widespread support from the profession on Sunday: in a press release, two unions, the CGT and the SNJ-CGT, gave them “all their support”, as well as about thirty companies of journalists from major media, including France Televisions, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Le Parisien, Liberation, Radio France or even Paris Match in a column published on Mediapart.
CGT leader Sophie Binet said “the extension of Bolloré’s media empire (was) a serious danger to democracy”.
A concern widely shared on the left, where several political leaders have denounced the supposed ambition of the billionaire, who now controls several major media (such as Canal +, Paris Match, Europe 1 and CNews) to prepare the ground for a takeover of the extreme right in the run-up to the 2027 presidential election.
Green MP Sandrine Rousseau supported the employees and Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure said he was “very worried about pluralism”.
“Today we have a problem of concentration in the hands (…) of Vincent Bolloré, it’s a whole galaxy that puts itself at the service of a man and at the service of an ambition, an ideology” , he continued on Radio J. “The ambition is to conquer power, I remind you that Vincent Bolloré was behind Eric Zemmour’s candidacy for the last presidential election”.
He called for new legislation to guarantee press freedom and editorial independence, with Socialists working in parliament on a bill on the subject.
A prospect to which the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, has not closed the door. “Given technological developments, also the landscape of the press, we should review all of this,” she said of the concentration in the media, interviewed in A Sunday in politics, on France 3.
At the RN, MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy regretted in Political Questions (France Inter / Le Monde / France Télévisions) that the Minister of Culture “gives his opinion on an editorial line” of a newspaper, but says he is not “at all opposed to the fact that there is a democratic reflection on who can own the media in France”.
25/06/2023 17:56:01 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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