{"id":218676,"date":"2021-06-27T09:01:42","date_gmt":"2021-06-27T09:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/06\/europe-1-radio-cnews-fox-journalists-strike-action-legardere-bollore-raguenel-far-right-new\/"},"modified":"2021-06-27T10:32:19","modified_gmt":"2021-06-27T10:32:19","slug":"billionaire-tycoons-are-turning-french-radio-into-a-copy-of-fox-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/06\/27\/billionaire-tycoons-are-turning-french-radio-into-a-copy-of-fox-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaire Tycoons Are Turning French Radio Into a Copy of Fox News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

For decades, Europe 1 has been one of France's most respected radio networks \u2014 but under pressure from its new billionaire owners, it's being merged into the Fox-style CNEWS. Last week, journalists took strike action, trying to stop a French broadcasting icon from becoming yet another far-right echo chamber.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n French billionaire Vincent Bollor\u00e9\u2019s intervention in Lagard\u00e8re Group media is the logical next step in his latest project: the creation of an unabashedly far-right audiovisual giant. (Zakaria Abdelkafi \/ AFP via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

On Wednesday, June 16, staff at France’s Europe 1 radio found themselves in a meeting with a representative of human resources. At the private radio station’s Paris headquarters, journalists were increasingly at odds with the new editorial line imposed by management \u2014 part and parcel of the broadcaster’s absorption by its new shareholders’ Fox-like TV channel.<\/p>\n

With tensions already running high, one journalist, Victor Dhollande, discovered that the human resources officer had been secretly recording the meeting on behalf of management. A widely admired but often combative employee who had earned accolades for his coverage of the pandemic, Dhollande lost his temper and was put on suspension until the end of June, with the possibility of his forced departure from the network.<\/p>\n

By recording the meeting, management wanted to keep its thumb on the pulse of a growing staff revolt. On Friday, June 18, demanding that Dhollande\u2019s suspension be rescinded, journalists voted overwhelmingly for a weekend strike, as airtime was filled with previously produced content or handed off to uncontracted employees and freelancers. Barring the restoration of editorial autonomy, the workers demanded that management grant the right to termination benefits through a \u201cconscience clause,\u201d which allows journalists to leave a media organization should its political bent change substantially. To their dismay, the journalists found out that the station’s particular status as a \u201cpress agency\u201d would preclude their access to this legal provision.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Sharp Right Turn<\/h2>\n \n

In recent months, Europe 1 radio has indeed changed its orientation, as it has been caught in the crossfire of a major transfer of power in the French media landscape. For decades it has been one of the flagship entities of the Lagard\u00e8re press empire, which also owns the tentacular Hachette publishing house, a chain of airport and train-station bookstores, and print titles such as the popular society magazine Paris Match<\/i> and the weekly paper Le journal du dimanche<\/i>. Now, this empire is in crisis \u2014 and new shareholders are making their presence felt with a sharp right-wing turn.<\/p>\n

Facing declining circulations, low ratings, and steep financial losses, Arnaud Lagard\u00e8re \u2014 scion of the industrialist Jean-Luc Lagard\u00e8re \u2014 has in recent years been forced to accept capital infusions from eager third parties. London-based vulture fund Amber Capital and the Qatari Investment Authority have respectively taken 20 and 13 percent stakes in Lagard\u00e8re. Bernard Arnault of Louis Vuitton Mo\u00ebt Hennessy fame has likewise taken a bite of Lagard\u00e8re media<\/a>. France’s wealthiest individual, Arnault last fall increased his stake to roughly 7 percent.<\/p>\n

With a reputation in Parisian business circles as a dilettante, Lagard\u00e8re, with a fortune of roughly \u20ac200 million, is a weak competitor in a world of swashbuckling mass-media concentration. Through extended negotiations and arm-twisting, he finally acceded to loosen his control of the governing board in favor of the new stakeholders. A shareholders’ meeting at the end of June will clarify his media empire’s new governance structure<\/a> \u2014 passing from limited partnership control to a more anonymous corporate structure.<\/p>\n

With the new balance of power at Lagard\u00e8re media, Europe 1 journalists are most worried by the now dominant stake controlled by billionaire Vincent Bollor\u00e9. Though his roughly \u20ac8 billion fortune is paltry compared to Arnault\u2019s \u20ac185 billion (the world\u2019s largest, according to Forbes<\/i><\/a>), Bollor\u00e9\u2019s portfolio extends from infrastructure and logistics to telecommunications and publicity and includes marquee brands such as the popular television network Canal+ <\/i>and the publicity giant Havas. Bollor\u00e9\u2019s intervention in Lagard\u00e8re media is the logical next step in his latest project: the creation of an unabashedly far-right audiovisual giant under the auspices of Vivendi, the Breton industrialist\u2019s media conglomerate.<\/p>\n

One Europe 1 journalist \u2014 speaking to Jacobin <\/i>on condition of anonymity, out of fear of reprisals in impending contract-termination negotiations \u2014 knows firsthand what working for Bollor\u00e9 means. Before starting at Europe 1, she worked in the early 2010s at another Bollor\u00e9 outlet and witnessed the particularly clientelist and interventionist relationship he had with his media holdings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have no desire to go through the same experience again,\u201d she remarked. Though he is careful to keep his hands clean from direct editorial involvement, \u201cBollor\u00e9 surrounds himself with people that are more Catholic than the Pope, as we used to say. They are constantly forced to self-censure.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As the journalist remembers, there was an implicit understanding among the editorial staff as to what stories could and could not be run. For instance, coverage of anything pertaining to the Ebola outbreak in African countries where the magnate boasted extensive investments and political ties was to be avoided. She recalled that during the 2014 mayoral elections in Paris, her colleagues had to angle their coverage in favor of the Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo. Her arrival at city hall meant the prospect of a more generous contract for the Bollor\u00e9-owned car-sharing company Autolib\u2019.<\/p>\n

Bollor\u00e9 has long been something of a political chameleon \u2014 his media investments acting more as tactical appendages to his other industrial concerns than as part of a coherent ideological project. While he boasted a close personal friendship with President Nicolas Sarkozy, France\u2019s right-wing president between 2007 and 2012, Bollor\u00e9’s media outlets also gave favorable coverage to center-left figures like Arnaud Montebourg and Anne Hidalgo in the early 2010s. During her earlier tenure under Bollor\u00e9, the Jacobin<\/i> source remarked that there was even a tacit understanding that coverage of Marine Le Pen<\/a> and France\u2019s nationalist right was to be kept to a bare minimum.<\/p>\n

Since 2016, however, following the breakdown of France\u2019s traditional party system, the metamorphosis of the billionaire\u2019s media portfolio has also meant a new political direction. Whether out of pure opportunism or genuine conviction, Bollor\u00e9 has placed his bets on consolidating a far-right pole in the media ecosystem. In 2016, Vivendi acquired the private television network i>T\u00e9l\u00e9, now known as CNEWS<\/a>, which resulted in a similar strike and the ultimate departure of scores of journalists ill at ease with the billionaire\u2019s plans for the network.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

False Balance<\/h2>\n \n

Bollor\u00e9\u2019s maneuvering to seize control of Europe 1 was cause for alarm within the current government. France\u2019s audiovisual regulatory authority has hesitated from intervening in ownership battles, and President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s entourage is rumored to have been behind Bernard Arnault\u2019s increased stake in Lagard\u00e8re. Boasting an already impressive media portfolio, with titles ranging from the liberal business daily Les \u00c9chos <\/i>to the newspaper Le Parisian<\/i>, Arnault was meant to provide a counterweight to Bollor\u00e9, checking the rise of a conservative media behemoth in the lead-up to the 2022 presidential election.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Staff journalists fear that moves fusing Europe 1 radio with CNEWS will turn their network into something of a French-language Fox News Radio. Adding an audio annex to CNEWS promises to extend the reach of the round-the-clock harangues already spewing out from the television panels. These constantly host polemicists like the far-right \u00c9ric Zemmour<\/a> to lament France\u2019s decline opposite a more moderate debating partner, present only in order to preserve the illusion of pluralism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe role of journalists is not to give a platform to person A and then person B,\u201d the Jacobin <\/i>source said. \u201cThe goal of journalists is to decipher, inform, and explain. What CNEWS does is give an open platform to one same type of people on the Right. \u2018On the Right\u2019 is a bit too kind. To people who are really on the extreme right.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On June 21, as the Europe 1 staff voted to extend the strike, Lagard\u00e8re spoke out on the developing conflict in an interview<\/a> with the conservative daily Le Figaro. <\/i>Dismissing his employees\u2019 anxiety about Bollor\u00e9, Lagard\u00e8re claimed that the deepening ties with Vivendi were purely a function of financial necessity \u2014 a chance for Europe 1 to benefit from the \u201csynergy\u201d of being part of a burgeoning media group. \u201cTo say that Europe 1 is going to pass into the hands of Vivendi,\u201d Lagard\u00e8re maintained, \u201cis a fantasy on the verge of conspiracy theory. Vincent Bollor\u00e9 is an asset, not a threat.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Workers have ample reasons not to be convinced of this \u2014 to say nothing of the fact that the surveillance of the June 16 meeting showed that management is digging in for a pitched battle over programming and editorial changes. The radio\u2019s restructured schedule<\/a>, slated to take effect in the coming months, points to the formerly centrist radio station\u2019s de facto annexation by CNEWS. If Lagard\u00e8re does retain a modicum of formal control in coming years \u2014 and an annual salary<\/a> of \u20ac5 million to boot \u2014 his chosen strategy for maintaining relevance seems to be acting as Bollor\u00e9\u2019s loyal lieutenant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Louis de Raguenel joined Europe 1 as assistant chief of the political service last fall, as the feeding frenzy over the Lagard\u00e8re group was picking up speed. A former editor at far-right weekly Valeurs Actuelles<\/i>, Raguenel’s arrival was greeted with animosity by long-standing journalists. In the station\u2019s new editorial hierarchy, however, Raguenel has been promoted to director of the political service.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Laurence Ferrari anchors CNEWS between 5 PM and 7 PM. With the new scheduling, she will officiate at Europe 1 between 5pm and 8pm, where she will lead her first hour with CNEWS, followed by an hour of coverage shared between the radio station and the television network. The CNEWS talking head Sonia Mabrouk, author of a 2021 screed against subversive elements in France<\/a>, will pick up a key Sunday roundtable slot, sponsored by the television network and Arnault-owned newspaper Les \u00c9chos<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond this undeniable editorial entanglement, the weight of Bollor\u00e9\u2019s censorship is already closing in on journalists at Europe 1. Last Friday, the humor columnist Christine Berrou resigned after she was told to change an upcoming segment which contained a jibe at \u00c9ric Zemmour, the far-right polemicist and CNEWS commentator who otherwise rages over cancel culture and wears his judicial convictions for hate speech as a badge of honor. On Twitter, Berrou posted<\/a> an edited screenshot of a text sent from a superior, who wrote that \u201cafter discussion with [X], it would make more sense to take out this reference to Zemmour.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt Europe 1, we don\u2019t have a culture of rebellion,\u201d the Jacobin<\/i> source conceded, \u201cwe have been used to being walked all over.\u201d The silver lining is that perhaps that is starting to change, as rank-and-file journalists find themselves caught in the grips of an expanding far-right media giant. But it might be too little, too late. On Wednesday, the strike was called off, as management offered assurances that employees who do leave Europe 1 will have access to benefits on the model of the “conscience clause.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday, June 16, staff at France\u2019s Europe 1 radio found themselves in a meeting with a representative of human resources. At the private radio station\u2019s Paris headquarters, journalists were increasingly at odds with the new editorial line imposed by management \u2014 part and parcel of the broadcaster\u2019s absorption by its new shareholders\u2019 Fox-like TV [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218676"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218706,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218676\/revisions\/218706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}