Actors, novelists and leftwing politicians have joined support for major strike action at France’s flagship Sunday newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, to protest against the appointment, ahead of its acquisition by the billionaire industrialist Vincent Bolloré, of an editor-in-chief who previously worked for a far-right magazine.
“For the first time in France since the liberation, a large national media will be run by a far-right personality. This is a dangerous precedent which concerns us all,” said an open-letter to Le Monde signed by hundreds of figures including the rapper and producer JoeyStarr, the actors Dénis Ménochet and Mathieu Amalric, the film-maker Nicole Garcia, as well as historians, academics and many politicians on the left, including the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo.
The paper, known as the JDD, is seen as France’s key Sunday paper, a mainstream title known for its political interviews and inside take on government policy, no matter the government in power.
But the paper was not published last Sunday amid a strike by almost all staff after it was announced that the new editor-in-chief was to be Geoffroy Lejeune.
Lejeune, 34, previously edited the magazine Valeurs Actuelles, known for its anti-immigrant front pages. While Lejeune was editor, the magazine was fined for making racist insults in 2021 after a story depicting the black MP Danièlle Obono as a slave in chains.
Under Lejeune’s editorshop, Valeurs Actuelles supported the far-right former TV pundit Eric Zemmour’s bid for the presidency. Lejeune is also a longtime friend of Marion Maréchal, the niece of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen who left her aunt’s National Rally party in 2022 to support Zemour’s presidential bid.
At the heart of the row is Bolloré’s growing media empire. The European Commission recently gave a conditional green light to Vivendi, Bolloré’s media conglomerate, to take over Lagardère, which owns the JDD and Paris Match.
The company already owns the news channel CNews, which has taken a conservative turn since Bolloré’s group took control, favouring opinion and heated studio debates over news bulletins. The anti-immigration and hardline law-and-order comments made by some of its chatshow hosts regularly inflame social media, and have drawn comparisons to the US channel Fox News.
There have also been protests at the radio station Europe 1, which is also part of Bolloré’s media expansion, with journalists saying they feared Bolloré’s Catholic conservatism would push its coverage towards divisive identity politics and culture wars.
At a senate hearing last year, Bolloré denied any interventionism and said his interest in acquiring media was purely “financial”.
The economist Julia Cagé told France Inter radio that the Journal du Dimanche should remain driven by factual news, “not opinion in service of Vincent Bolloré’s ideological crusade”. She said there had been a pattern after Bolloré takeovers: newsrooms dismantled, journalists made to leave, “replaced with journalists answering to his orders”.
Christophe Deloire, the head of the international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, denounced what he said was a “brutal method” to assert shareholder control over the newsroom that contradicted “the basic rules of journalism”.
On Sunday, the French culture minister, Rima Abdul Malak, tweeted: “I understand the newsroom’s concerns. Legally speaking, the JDD can become whatever it wants, as long as it abides by the law. But as far as our republic’s values are concerned, how can one not be alarmed?”
The JDD’s editorial association said in a statement it was “stunned” by Lejeune’s nomination. “Under Geoffroy Lejeune, Valeurs Actuelles spread hateful attacks and fake news. We refuse to let the JDD follow this path.”
Lejeune has said he was “honoured” to lead a such a prestigious publication.
