At the “Journal du dimanche”, the strike continues over the appointment of Geoffroy Lejeune as head of the weekly. That makes, this Sunday, 32 days. Without pay, the mobilized journalists can notably count on the money collected by their strike fund.
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The journalists of JDD enter Sunday, July 23 in their second month of strike. For the fifth consecutive week, there is no Sunday newspaper at the newsstand. They protest against the nomination at the head of their newspaper of Geoffroy Lejeune, the ex-director of the far-right weekly Current Values, supported by Eric Zemmour. All this fits into the context of the resumption of JDD by the Vivendi group of Vincent Bolloré, already owner of CNews.
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The journalists’ strike Sunday newspaper therefore becomes the longest in a media, ahead of that carried out on l-TV in 2016. 32 days of strike also means 32 days without pay. There is inevitably a risk of seeing some return to work, constrained and forced, for financial reasons. To hold, the JDD journalists created a strike fund. Several tens of thousands of euros have been deposited.
“It is fed both by major donors and by anonymous people, explains Bertrand Gréco, the co-president of the SDJ, the Society of Journalists of the weekly. There are even people we meet in the street, who accost us because we have our ‘JDD on strike’ badge, to offer us to participate in this strike fund. It really warms the heart. In particular for the most precarious of the drafting, the freelancers, who often have small incomes. This strike fund is essential for them”.
The issue of media independence in the Assembly
Beyond this financial support, moral support is also very important, when fatigue and weariness can win the ranks. The hundred journalists from JDD therefore sends messages to each other every day and meets daily. “We really form an extremely tight-knit collective”underlines Juliette Demey, great reporter and member of the Society of Journalists.
“We are all opposed to the idea that our newspaper can be trampled on like this”
Juliette Demey, senior reporter at the “JDD”at franceinfo
“We are all going together in the same direction, it carries us because we are transcended by something bigger than us”, she continues. For Juliette Demey, it’s a fight beyond the JDD, to have independent editorial staff. The transpartisan bill tabled Wednesday, July 19 in the Assembly on this subject is therefore a first small victory for these journalists.