Archive / Magazine / Politics / France / Facts | 01/08/2008

French media have run out of steam

In autumn the french governement will decide how to finance public broadcasting. Nicolas Sarkozy wants to abrogate publicity on public television; the media oppose this idea. Augustin Scalbert on mediapolitics in France.

In France, more than in other comparable European countries, the news situation is worrying: the written press is in crisis, certain of the most powerful media belong to groups whose interests are connected to those of the State, and the President of the Republic has close relationships with press bosses, many of whom have built their empires with the help - or the approbation - of political power.

Photo: Volker Stock (Photocase)

When politics and media mix

So the public television reforms that have been announced, and which above all will be of benefit to the private sector, are perceived as a gift given by Nicolas Sarkozy to his friends. In parallel, the journalists are in increasingly precarious positions, which makes any protest more difficult. The government has announced that the "States General of the press" will be held in September.

The station with the largest viewing figures in France, TF1, belongs to Bouygues, a building and public works group, which signs contracts with the public authorities on an everyday basis, for building roads, bridges, or all types of amenities at national, regional and local level. The group also owns Bouygues Telecom, the third largest mobile telephone network in France, whose licence was granted by a State authority. In addition to these economic connections between the TF1 shareholder and political power, there is a personal connection: Martin Bouygues, head of the group bearing his name, is a close friend of Nicolas Sarkozy. He was a witness at his wedding to Cécilia, and is godfather to their son Louis.

So the station TF1 (as well as its subsidiary LCI, a continuous news station) is regularly accused of collusion with power. On 6 May 2007, before it was officially announced that Nicolas Sarkozy had been elected (at 20:00), we could see a glass of champagne on the screen beside Claire Chazal, who was presenting the evening's electoral broadcast. After he had been elected, the President had to part with one of his closest colleagues, whom his wife Cécilia did not like. Thanks to Martin Bouygues, this colleague, a technocrat who had absolutely no experience in the media, became n°3 of the TF1 group. His appointment was announced by the Elysée (the French President's official residence), before being confirmed by TF1.

When he was Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy had already announced on TF1 the arrival of Harry Roselmack, the first black presenter of the eight o'clock news. Then, when the incontestable star of the 8 o'clock news, Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, was removed a few weeks ago, the newspapers recalled that the President had not liked one of his interviews. TF1, which has been experiencing a decline in audience figures for a few years, is at present undergoing thorough reform. Its new director general in charge of news broadcasting, Jean-Claude Dassier, is also a close friend of Nicolas Sarkozy. His son, Arnaud Dassier, managed Sarkozy's presidential campaign on the Internet.

The media at the service of the Head of State

Other French media groups have this "double coupling" between political friendships and economic interests, which the media sociologist Jean-Marie Charon describes as "dangerous". The sociologist considers that at European level, "It is in France that the news is the most permeable to other forces".

Arnaud Lagardère, who controls the empire of the same name, is an important shareholder of the aeronautical group EADS. Furthermore, he owns 7.5% of the shares of the Franco-German group, which sells its products to other States, including France.
The Lagardère Active Médias group is the world's top magazine editor. In France, he owns numerous newspapers, radio stations or television stations. These are not all news media, but those that are have names enjoying prestige and recognition in France: Europe 1, Paris Match, le Journal du Dimanche, for example. The group also owns 25% of the Amaury group (Le Parisien-Aujourd'hui, L'Equipe), 17% of the Le Monde group (and 35% of its subsidiary Le Monde Interactif), where it was able to become majority shareholder in the subsequent months, alongside the Spanish Prisa group. Incidentally, Lagardère owns half of the largest newspaper distribution circuit, the NMPP (Nouvelles Messageries de la Presse Parisienne = New Parisian Press Distribution Service), as well as the Relay shops, which have the monopoly on the sale of newspapers on railway stations and in airports.
One day Arnaud Lagardère told his employees that he considered himself to be Nicolas Sarkozy's "brother". You do not get angry with your brother. In 2006, the managing editor of Paris Match, Alain Genestar, was sacked, after having published a photo of Cécilia Sarkozy with her lover, Richard Attias, in New York in one of the editions of the weekly. On 6 May 2007, the person who was still Nicolas Sarkozy's wife, Cécilia, abstained from voting. The Journal du Dimanche wanted to publish this information, in the form of a short report. The small article was censored when Arnaud Lagardère intervened.

So the Lagardère media group is showing that it is very submissive to power. In 2006, the chairman of Europe 1 radio station, Jean-Pierre Elkabbach, called Nicolas Sarkozy to obtain his agreement on the choice of a journalist charged with following up Nicolas Sarkozy's action. Lagardère's caution in respect of Nicolas Sarkozy sometimes becomes ridiculous: in February 2008, all of the Relay shops in France folded a promotional advert for the weekly Courrier International to hide the title: "Seen from Madrid: Sarkozy, this very sick man".

Still in this "double coupling" category, let us quote Serge Dassault, Senate member belonging to the UMP (l'Union pour un Mouvement Populaire = The Union for a People's Movement), Nicolas Sarkozy's party. This industrialist, who is trying in vain to sell his Rafale combat aircraft with the help of the French State, owns Le Figaro. Yves Thréard, one of the managing editors of the conservative daily, stated one day at a meeting that "Monsieur Dassault has a newspaper so he can behave like a political militant."
Vincent Bolloré, who has recently arrived in the world of media, and who had the privilege of taking the new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, away on his yacht just after his election, also depends on public orders for part of the his group's business. He uses his newspapers free of charge for advertising his interests in Africa, where he is one of the major players in logistics, port activities and plantations. On 25 January 2008, his Direct 8 television station cancelled a broadcast on "Sarkozy and women" at the last moment, claiming "technical problems". Several journalists, as well as the Socialist Party, denounced this as "auto-censorship".

Personal friendships

Other French media groups only have "single coupling" with power. For the billionaire Bernard Arnault, who owns the foremost French economic daily (Les Echos) at the same time as the largest luxury group in the world (LVMH), it is only friendship. But this friendship is strong - he was also a witness at Nicolas Sarkozy's wedding - and when he "only" owned La Tribune (the challenger of Les Echos), the newspaper did not hesitate to favour Nicolas Sarkozy, sometimes to the detriment of Ségolène Royal, his competitor in the presidential elections. Bernard Arnault's right-hand man, Nicolas Bazire, has been close to Sarkozy since they became acquainted in the wake of the Prime Minister, Edouard Balladur, in the 'nineties. Bazire was a witness at Sarkozy's third wedding, to Carla Bruni. The boss of the LVMH media area, Nicolas Beytout, was the only journalist invited to the small party given at le Fouquet's by Nicolas Sarkozy, on the evening when he was elected.

The separate media

Among these fifty privileged people at this party founding the Sarkozy era, were also the Belgian billionaire Albert Frère, who has a very minor holding (5%) in the station M6. The majority shareholder of the second-largest French private television broadcasting company is the German Bertelsmann, who also owns the foremost radio broadcasting company in the country, RTL.

So with its subsidiary Prisma (Capital, VSD), Bertelsmann is one of the only groups specialising in media on the French scene, like the Belgian Roularta (L'Express) group. There are nonetheless a few French "pure players", like Le Canard Enchaîné (which provides a great many scoops, and which has lived since 1915 without advertising), the Bayard Presse (La Croix) group, or, in the provinces, the Ouest France and Hersant Médias groups. But the largest regional press group, L'Est Républicain, has just come under the control of a bank, the Crédit Mutuel. In 2006, the management of the prestigious daily Le Monde had censored an enquiry into another bank, the Caisse d'Epargne, which is among its shareholders and advertisers. Advertisers' pressure is another reality in France, in addition to that of political power: so, in 2006, M6 had partially censored a report on the Française des jeux.

The structures of journalism as a profession in France

This weakness of the media, particularly the written press, can partly be explained by the fact that its structures are so cumbersome. Newspaper manufacturing is provided by a category of workers, the Printing workers, who are recruited by co-option inside the CGT (Confédération générale du travail = equivalent to the Trades Union Congress), in accordance with a tradition that has existed since 1945. This CGT federation of Printing workers also controls the newspaper distribution circuit, les Nouvelles Messageries de la Presse Parisienne (NMPP). With the power to block newspaper printing or distribution, these workers scare the owners, who are in a position of weakness as compared to them. So the employers have considerable expectations of the States General of the press, which Nicolas Sarkozy has announced will be held in September.

Amongst the advantages obtained by the Printing workers in recent years is the possibility of retraining for publishing positions, up to present reserved for journalists. This does not suit this profession, which has been subject to numerous planned redundancy schemes in recent months: the Le Monde, Le Figaro, Lagardère, and L'Express groups are amongst the most recent of these. Alongside this, the proportion of paid employees (journalists sometimes have the status of salaried employee, but are most often free-lance) has been increasing among journalists: from 7.1% in 1965, it has risen to 18.5% of press card holders in 1998. This figure, which has since become stabilised, but does not include the proportion of journalists who are not press card holders, which is difficult to determine. The precariousness of journalists, which is prejudicial to the quality of the news, is also one of the challenges of the future States General.

The confidentiality of sources

In France, the news is faced with another problem, that of the confidentiality of journalists' sources. The European Court of Human Rights regularly thrashes violation of this by French governments, via the police and legal proceedings. The magazine Le Point and Le Canard Enchaîné have recently undergone thorough enquiries. The last affair to date was the placement of the journalist Guillaume Dasquié under surveillance by the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (the counter-espionage services), in December 2007. Last April, he published an enquiry in Le Monde entitled "11 September: the French people had long known". In this, he disclosed documents classed as "confidential defence" showing that France had warned the United States of the imminence of a terrorist attack. Police officers and the deputy public prosecutor exerted pressure on him to reveal his sources. In spring 2008, the Minister of Justice Rachida Dati wanted to introduce a bill to Parliament for reforming the law on the protection of sources. As a result of the protests by journalists - because the bill provided for very vague exceptions to protection - the reform was postponed sine die.

Reforms in the public audio-visual sectors

On the other hand, the reform of the audio-visual sector, appears to have progressed quite far, in spite of opposition by employees. When making his wishes known to the press, on 8 January, to everyone's surprise, Nicolas Sarkozy announced his intention, in particular, of removing advertising from the public audio-visual group France Télévisions' stations. In doing this, he was complying with an earlier demand by private stations, including TF1, owned by his friend Martin Bouygues. Less than three weeks before this, TF1 had sent to the Elysée a report, demanding that advertising be removed from the public... A journalist with L'Express named Martin Bouygues as "the great inspiration behind the president's thinking on audio-visual reform". Reform is reaching the designated point for this station, which has been losing ground since TNT started up.

The government has promised to refund the cost of the disappearance of advertising from France Télévisions, estimated at 1.2 milliard Euros per year, in full, including the production budget for the programmes that will replace the three hours' advertising per day. If Parliament passes the reform just as it is, the French people will finance this loss of earnings: the demand will not increase, but it is forecast that there will be a 0.9% tax on mobile phone operators' revenues and suppliers of access to the Internet. These last-mentioned have already announced that they will increase their tariffs as a result.

Another change that has been announced is the direct appointment of the chairman of France Télévisions by executive power. Nicolas Sarkozy considers that this is the end of a type of hypocrisy, since the present appointment by the Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (= Higher Audio-visual Council), supposed to be independent of political power, was not deceiving anyone. But by legalising this direct appointment, the President is precluding any opportunity for the paid employees of France 2, France 3 and other stations to protest. Just before announcing this decision, on Wednesday 25 June, Nicolas Sarkozy had received the France Télévisions interunion committee at the Elysée. Coming out of the palace, the committee members were prevented from joining the journalists who were present for the presidential press conference, to whom they wanted to give their point of view, as can be seen in this video.

The declining quality of the news

In the face of interference through political and economic power, the journalists and the general public are getting organised. In large editorial offices, there are still journalists' Organisations that protest in the event of pressure or censorship. Grouped together in a national forum, which is able to speak with a single voice in the event of a serious attack on the freedom of the press, they are demanding legal status. As far as the public is concerned, it is forming associations, one of which is requesting that a press council be set up, like the one in Québec.

For Nadine Toussaint-Desmoulins, professor of media economics at the Institut français de presse (= French Press Institute), this is proof: in France, "the proximity of power is prejudicial to the quality of news".
When the neighbouring countries, which (except for Italy) are not suffering from a context of this kind of proximity, have almost all managed to draw lines between powers, France is embroiled in a news crisis, with relative indifference on the part of the general public.
The situation is sadly simple: according to Jean-Marie Charon, for multiple historical reasons, "we cannot understand why lines have to be drawn between the owner of a media enterprise and the editors, or between advertising and editorial advertising".
An example: in France, it is the manager of the publication – the majority shareholder or his representative – who has legal liability. "That is lame", considers the sociologist, "since we cannot understand why he would give his editorial staff autonomy". In Germany, in the event of condemnation by the courts, it is the editor who is prosecuted.

The Internet to get over the crisis?

For the journalists and the French public, perhaps the Internet will save the day. The appearance on the scene of independent media (Rue89.com, Bakchich.info, Mediapart.fr...) is pushing the traditional media to greater capacity for reaction. Very symbolically, the Rue89 site became known ten days after it started up, in May 2007, by disclosing censored news in the Journal du Dimanche (Cécilia Sarkozy had not voted).
But the race for a scoop on the Internet involves risks of mistakes: this is how the Le Nouvel Observateur website published a false SMS by Nicolas Sarkozy, in which he was saying to Cécilia "If you come back, I shall cancel everything", at the time he was marrying Carla Bruni... Furthermore, an appropriate economic model for online-media still has to be found.

Further articles on the subject » Audiovisual Media, » Publishing houses, » Print media, » Online media, » Media policy, » France
More from the press review on the subject » Audiovisual Media, » Publishing houses, » Print media, » Online media, » Media policy, » France