“Before our incredulous eyes a retrograde revolution is taking place which it is urgent to prevent”. A collective called Stop Bolloré, made up of unions, associations, media and left-wing personalities, is launching an appeal on Wednesday February 16 to denounce the constitution by the billionaire of a “sprawling media empire” which serves a “reactionary ideology”.
It is notably signed by journalists’ unions (SNJ, SNJ-CGT), associations (Attac, Maison des potes, Mrap), media (review Regards) as well as journalists and left-wing personalities (Edwy Plenel, Daniel Schneidermann, lawyer Arié Alimi, historians Mathilde Larrère and Laurence de Cock…).
Billionaire Vincent Bolloré is at the head of an empire that has one foot in industry (Bolloré group) and the other in the media (Vivendi). It is present in the audiovisual sector (Canal+ group and its channels C8 and CNews, radio Europe 1), the press (Prisma Media, the leading group of magazines in France, JDD, Paris-Match…), advertising/communication (Havas) or publishing (Editis).
The collective targets in particular the CNews channel, accused of feeding “an obsession with far-right themes”. Via some of its members, the collective approached Arcom (ex-CSA) about “multiple shortcomings” observed in the program “Face à l’info”, which hosted Eric Zemmour between 2019 and 2021.
In addition, member structures of the collective have filed a complaint against X for, in particular, “provocation to arm themselves against a part of the population not followed by effect”. Filed Wednesday with the Paris prosecutor’s office, this complaint targets comments made by Eric Zemmour on CNews. Present on social networks, the collective promises gatherings in the weeks to come.