The editorial director of Parisian will he face a motion of no confidence the week of April 3? The question arises, in the daily newspaper of the Les Echos-Le Parisien group (owned by Financière Agache, the holding company of Bernard Arnault), after a general assembly, Thursday March 30, allowed more than a hundred journalists to express their reservations vis-à-vis Nicolas Charbonneau, in office since September 2022.
Planned for several days, this general meeting was originally intended to renew the office of the Society of Journalists (SDJ). But an internal statement sent the day before, regretting “a treatment considered partisan, if not oriented” of the challenge of the pension reform “in a newspaper traditionally respectful of all republican and democratic sensitivities “, found a powerful echo among an editorial staff lacking collegiality. At the end of a three-hour meeting, which at least 120 journalists attended on site or remotely, another text was written, reporting on a “great concern” of the editorial staff.
“Journalists testified here that they were explicitly asked not to work on certain investigations”, the collective is alarmed. During the exchanges, in fact, when it was reported that Nicolas Charbonneau certified that he had not received any instructions from the shareholder, the investigative journalist Jean-Michel Décugis took the floor to protest. According to several participants, he would have been asked to interrupt an investigation when the name of Vincent Bolloré appeared. “It would have been suggested to him that our shareholder was in negotiations with Bolloré to buy back media titles”explains a journalist, on condition of anonymity. “Jean-Michel had not wanted to spread the story until thenadds another. He spoke because he wouldn’t want any further investigations to be ‘trapped’.”. Asked, Mr. Décugis did not respond to our calls.
The editorial director of “Echos” ousted
At Parisianthis story seemed all the less innocuous as the neighboring editorial staff Echoes has just seen his boss, Nicolas Barré, brutally ousted. However, the journalists of the economic daily detected the stranglehold of the CEO of LVMH. Some articles, including a review ofstory of an ogrethe book that Erik Orsenna devotes to Vincent Bolloré, would have displeased Bernard Arnault.
The two billionaires are shareholders of the Lagardère group, on which the Vivendi group has launched a takeover bid. However, the European Commission, on which the validation of the operation depends, fears at this stage that Vivendi will find itself in a dominant position in the people press segment by becoming the owner, in addition to Here is and of Galaof Paris Match. This could encourage Mr. Arnault to submit a new purchase offer, after the one he had formulated in 2021 (up to 80 million euros) for Paris Match and for The Sunday newspaper. “We have to stick together with Les Echos, says an editor. As soon as there is shareholder intervention, you have to show that you are present. » LDS representatives from Echoes could thus be invited to testify at a general meeting which should be held at Parisian next week.
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