Laurent Joffrin announced on Friday 1er September, that he would no longer go on CNews, where he was regularly invited to debate, due to the forced redesign of the Sunday newspaper (JDD).
In a letter titled “Why I am leaving CNews,” published Thursday on its media site The newspaperthe journalist, marked on the left, explains that he no longer wants to go to the channel owned by the Vivendi group, also the largest shareholder in the Lagardère group and under whose leadership the brutal reorganization of the weekly took place. “Throughout my professional life, I have defended and implemented the idea of journalistic and political autonomy for the newsrooms of which I was a member”remembers the former director of Release and New Observer.
Within these two newsrooms, the 71-year-old journalist explains that he participated in the creation of charters guaranteeing “balanced processing of information” and be “submitted five times” over the course of his career to the right of veto of the editorial staff.
“All principles and all practices that have been swept aside unceremoniously in the case of the Sunday newspapertriggering the hostility of more than 90% of the editors of the weekly, who carried out the longest strike in its history, without being able to be heard”continues the journalist, who launched The newspaper in April.
Historic forty-day strike
“Under these conditions, and for this precise reason, it seems to me incoherent to continue to work in a chain directed by the same owner, whose methods I have strongly denounced, on several occasions in this letter, JDD »he says.
THE JDD was rocked by a historic forty-day editorial strike against the appointment at the end of June of Geoffroy Lejeune, former editorial director of Current values marked on the far right. Many observers see in this recruitment the hand of Vincent Bolloré, a billionaire with opinions reputed to be ultra-conservative.
Vivendi, Mr. Bolloré’s group owning Canal+ and its channels (including CNews and C8), is in the process of absorbing Lagardère, owner of the JDDof Paris Match and Europe 1, after a successful takeover bid.