Their societies of journalists (SDJ) were alarmed by “positions” targeting the minister, Rima Abdul Malak, in two separate letters consulted by AFP. They are addressed to their management and to Constance Benqué, the president of Lagardère News, the press group to which these newspapers belong.
The future of C8 and CNews has been at the center of a controversy since statements last week by Ms. Abdul Malak about these channels belonging to Canal +, a subsidiary of Vivendi, a group of billionaire Vincent Bolloré.
The minister recalled on France Inter that the audiovisual regulator, Arcom, could withdraw their frequencies from channels not respecting their obligations, stressing that C8 and CNews have been pinned “twenty” times since 2019.
She also mentioned the interference of which Vincent Bolloré is regularly accused in the media he owns, in particular those of the Lagardère group (Europe 1, JDD, Paris Match), which must pass into his lap.
In response, Canal+ said it was “deeply shocked” and deemed these statements contrary to the “independence” of Arcom.
Since then, the subject has caused a stir within Paris Match and the JDD, as revealed by the Les Jours site.
The JDD’s SDJ denounced the first “what appears to it to be a coordinated response” to the minister’s statements.
They are mentioned “three times” in the latest edition of the weekly: on the sidelines of an interview with the boss of LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, on pensions, in a “tribune by Francis Balle, ex-member of the CSA” for whom “Arcom must guarantee freedom of opinion”, and in a “virulent even insulting” column by comedian Gaspard Proust.
“Above all”, Vivendi is never mentioned there as a shareholder of Lagardère, which can only “taint the image of independence” of the title, according to the SDJ.
Similarly, that of Paris Match has “dissociated” from an editorial by Patrick Mahé, managing director of the editorial staff, according to which “threatening private media from a public antenna has a little scent of totalitarian drift”. Again without recalling the title’s links with Vivendi, at the risk of “raising doubts about the independence of the editorial staff”, according to the SDJ.
Contacted by AFP, the management of Lagardère News declined to comment.