At “Paris Match” and “JDD”, the journalists’ societies no longer exist

2024-02-04 12:20:45
This photograph taken on June 27, 2023 shows the logo of the French newspapers “Paris Match”, “Le Journal du Dimanche” and “JDD Magazine”, on the facade of the Lagardère News building in Paris. MARTIN LELIEVRE / AFP

The Societies of Journalists (SDJ) Paris Match a you Sunday newspaper (JDD) are “scuttled”leaving these titles “without internal counter-power” facing the control of billionaire Vincent Bolloré, we learned on Friday February 2 from one of their former members.

Let SDJ you JDD voted to dissolve on January 30. That of Paris Match disappeared the same day, no candidate having come forward following the resignation of members of his office, this source told Agence France-Presse (AFP), confirming information from the site Days.

The owner of these newspapers, the Lagardère group, which also owns Europe 1, has since November been under the full control of Vivendi, a media giant controlled by the family of Vincent Bolloré, with ultraconservative opinions. Asked by AFP, Lagardère management did not react immediately.

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The SDJ from Paris Match had expressed, in December, its disagreement with the choice of a “front page” dedicated to a Christmas nativity scene in a Parisian home belonging to Vincent Bolloré. The three members of the SDJ office resigned following a stormy meeting with the management of Lagardère News.

In the summer of 2022, the former editor-in-chief of politics and economics Paris Match Bruno Jeudy was removed from this post after the publication of a cover, contested by the SDJ, dedicated to the ultraconservative cardinal Robert Sarah. A motion of censure was passed against the management.

In June, a member of the SDJ, who had been concerned about interference by Mr. Bolloré in the editorial choices of the magazine, was fired.

The SDJ becomes an empty shell

Au JDD, the members of the SDJ unanimously voted to dissolve it because it had become an empty shell. Grouped together in the Article 34 association, former members specified on“she has no longer intervened since the end of the strike on August 1, at the end of which 95% of journalists chose to leave this title now headed by Geoffroy Lejeune”former editorial director of Current valuesmarked on the far right.

The SDJ remained in place to monitor the departures of journalists (around fifty monthly journalists, around forty freelancers).

“If the members of the SDJ offices do not benefit from a protective status, like that of elected union officials, there is a risk of a weakening, or even a gradual disappearance, of these associations which guarantee respect for ethics and independence is real »alerts the association Article 34, which prohibits “freedom, pluralism and independence of the media”.

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The World with AFP