Xavier Azalbert, publishing director of FranceSoir, has lent himself to an exceptional “Truth Challenge”, since he has, for once, taken the guest chair to respond to Questions from Wolf Wagner. An independent journalist, the latter has collaborated with our media, in particular on social movements and public freedoms, two of his work subjects. We had notably published Global security: the law of all dangers for democracy or its survey “Demonstration figures: between manipulation and communication”.
It is therefore with confidence but without complacency that he interviews Xavier Azalbert on the various controversies that have accompanied FranceSoir, in particular for the past two years. Based on an editorial by Nicolas Poincaré (January 2021), on the original and pilot “The Challenge of Truth” where Xavier Azalbert answered questions from Christophe Kulikowskias well as on the Wikipedia page of FranceSoir, receptacle of many attacks, Wolf Wagner invites him to give his point of view on these lawsuits made to a press organ.
Our director looks back on the genesis of his investment, financial and human, in FranceSoir, and on the progressive shaping of the newspaper in its current version. Explaining his career, his time at McKinsey twenty years ago, recalling the choice of independence via the refusal of direct public subsidies, drawing the contours of a journalism that seeks pluralism by giving everyone a voice, in particular to voices restrained elsewhere, by opening its columns to citizens, he tells how FranceSoir has transformed itself, from a former “cathedral” of the French press which experienced many crises, to the new media that it is today. today.
Accusations of conspiracy to attacks from colleagues (see “The Unleashed Duck … next to the truth”), reproaches for his participation in “Hold up” or for the publication of forums such as the famous “I’m calling!” by Francis Lalanne, from the “LancetGate” to the attacks on NewsGuard, interviews with “renowned scientists from all over the world” (see “A trip around the world in more than 100 interviews”) which showed that the “scientific consensus” n was not done, that science was not “binary”, passing through the jolts of reactions to explosive platforms (see “Widow” and imaginary side effects: correlation is not causality), Xavier Azalbert, at the microphone by Wolf Wagner, sweeps away all the subjects on which FranceSoir is attacked. In this interview, he develops his explanations on episodes about which he had never spoken, recognizes certain errors, denounces the dishonesty of certain prosecutors, clarifies ambiguities: a “Challenge of the truth” for an uncompromising clarification .
A “Truth Challenge” which outlines the main lines of the FranceSoir project: far from fantasies, hasty or unfair labels, trials of intent and Pavlovian invectives, that of delivering “fair information”, with our means and the reinforcement of all those who contribute to it, without pretension but not without ambition, in a dynamic under construction, faithful to this spirit of freedom and resistance which animated “Défense de la France” (the largest circulation of the clandestine press under the Occupation, which will become “France-Soir”) that we strive to perpetuate today.
The publication of an exceptional paper copy (to be read below in digital form) on April 1st is a symbolic milestone:
See also: FranceSoir special edition: “The man who did not like France”