Eight billionaires today share most of the French press. Vincent Bolloré owns Canal+, magazines like Tele-Leisure, Gala, Current wife Where Capital. He is in the process of buying the media from Lagardère (Europe 1, The Sunday Journal, Paris Match). Luxury leader Bernard Arnault owns The echoes, The Parisian Today in France, Classic Radio. François Pinault is the owner of the weekly Point, the Dassault family of Figaro. Patrick Drahi manages Altice so BFMTV and RMC, Xavier Niel is in the capital of the group The world, from the weekly The Obs, maybe he will be the future boss of The Provence. The Czech Daniel Kretinsky notably took possession of Marianne and She. Finally Bouygues has eight TV channels, including TF1 and LCI.
This stranglehold of large fortunes is worrying, especially during the presidential campaign. Do they influence public opinion, do they dictate an editorial line to the editorial staff, do they prevent troublesome cases from coming out? In short, are the media still independent? This is what the senators are trying to find out, who have set up a commission of inquiry into media concentration. All the big bosses will be auditioned, starting on Wednesday January 19 with Vincent Bolloré, CEO of Vivendi.
“These hearings will, I hope, be an opportunity to ask essential questions for the pluralism of information, especially during electoral periods, and for the future of democracy itself”.
Alexis Levrieron franceinfo
“It raises obvious questions of internal pluralism for these newsrooms, especially when one of these shareholders, Vincent Bolloré, breaks with what usually happened, namely the relative autonomy of the newsrooms. We know that CNews and Europe 1 are subject to an increasingly marked political line on the extreme right, in an assumed way. And moreover, this is the first time in an electoral campaign that a candidate has emerged directly from a press group. shareholder who made Eric Zemmour’s candidacy possible, this candidacy is the product of the exposure he received on Cnews between 2019 and 2021, and C8 with TPMP which devoted incredible importance to Zemmour between September and December 2021. We are in an electoral campaign which is played out largely on the basis of the conditions set by this shareholder”, explains Alexis Lévrier, lecturer at the University of Reims, specialist in media history and author of the book Macron and Jupiter, presidential power in the face of the press published by Les petits matins.
The other topical subject that is attracting attention is the planned merger between TF1 and M6. And there are two conflicting points of view: “There is the speech of Emmanuel Macron, who says that we need national champions to face the influence of Gafa and Netflix, and the speech which claims that even if we make great French groups, they will not not the weight anyway. Perhaps the regulatory instrument that we should set is at the political level: limiting the hold of these giants, their ability to preempt most of the advertising revenue from the press. is perhaps a debate to be led at European level: how to fight against the influence of these giants? Is it by merging TF1 and M6 that we will resist Google or Netflix, I questioned…” says Alexis Lévrier.