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The media landscape in France

France's media tradition stretches back over several centuries. One of Europe's first magazines (La Gazette) was founded here in 1631, and the world's first international news agency AFP was founded in 1835. Freedom of the press was enshrined in the country's constitution as early as 1881.

Foto: Henry_Marion, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-nc/2.0

The country's media have always had close ties with politics. Hundreds of dailies appeared in Paris during the French Revolution, and important political figures worked with different press institutions again and again over the centuries. The state continues to play a key role in providing financial backing for print media and as an owner of the public broadcasting companies.

Print media generate 11 billion euros every year, with television making 5.5 billion and radio 1 billion. Daily newspapers, however, have been in crisis for two decades owing to their high production costs and the growing competition from specialist journals and free online news portals. On top of that young people read less news today than they used to, whether in print form or online.

A growing number of journalists write blogs, many on the websites of the medium that employs them, such as the dailies Le Figaro and Le Monde. Within the space of two years the news blog Rue89 has established itself as an important source of information.

The liberalisation of broadcasting in the 1980s saw the founding of several new television broadcasting stations, both private and public. The French media authority CSA was set up in 1986 to regulate the sector. Television and radio play an important role in French everyday life.

The French media had a long tradition of being owned by independent publishing houses. For some years now there has been a trend toward mergers, and media have been bought up by large companies. Today the market is dominated by a handful of multimedia groups like Lagardère and Vivendi. This market concentration has been intensified by alliances between different groups, which because of open tendering procedures are dependent on the state. This raises the question of how independent and pluralistic the French media actually are today.

This country's media at euro|topics