Paris, 28 June 2023
French weekly 'Journal du Dimanche' (JDD) is in turmoil after the shock appointment of far-right Geoffroy Lejeune as the new editor.
"Everyone is in shock, stunned," one journalist at the JDD newspaper told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Geoffroy Lejeune was unveiled last week as the new editor of the influential weekly newspaper, the only national Sunday paper with sales of around 140,000 copies.
The 34-year-old news editor's rise to prominence underlines the rightwards shift of the country's media and politics.
He is close to several senior far-right political figures, and, according to the statement from the paper's union of journalists, he "expresses ideas that are the opposite of the values that the JDD has carried over the last 75 years."
News of his nomination came last week, from owner Lagardere group, which was recently acquired by conservative billionaire Vincent Bollore.
It immediately prompted a mass walkout from staff which has paralysed the paper and its website.
Lejeune's nomination was also described as a "provocation and the demonstration that the far-right is now installing itself calmly in the media" by eight former editors of the newspaper.
General concern among political leaders and media
The media freedom group Reporters without Borders (RSF) expressed concern about Lejeune being handed such an important media platform.
The group organised a special meeting on Tuesday evening at the Théâtre libre in central Paris, with many personalities from the media and politics.
Politicians on the left as well as France's Culture Minister Rima Abdul-Malak joined the statement.
"Legally speaking, the JDD can become what it wants, as long as it respects the law," Abdul-Malak wrote on Twitter on Sunday. "But for our republic's values, how can you not be alarmed?"
Bollore, a conservative Catholic from northwest France, he has been gradually expanding his empire to take in TV channels, the magazine Paris Match, radio station Europe 1 and lately the JDD.
He turned the channel CNews into a conservative platform dubbed "France's Fox News" by critics.
"Bollore is a specialist in taking an axe to media that he buys," Christophe Deloire, secretary general of RSF, also wrote on Twitter.
RSF published a report his constant attacks against free press in 2021.
A career marred by anti-Semitic and racist headlines
Geoffroy Lejeune was until recently editor of the far-right weekly magazine Valeurs Actuelles, helping to raise its profile through provocative headlines and caustic attacks on the country's politicians and intellectuals.
Immigration, crime, alleged left-wing media bias, "woke" teachers, "anti-white" ethnic minorities, as well as the spread of Islamism were common subjects covered by Valeurs Actuelles under Lejeune.
"Save white heterosexual 50-year-old men," read one of his last front-page headlines in May.
In 2019, the publication was criticised by around 400 academics in a joint letter after a vicious and highly personal diatribe against Benjamin Stora, a renowned Jewish historian of French colonial history, who viewed the article as anti-Semitic.
The magazine has also repeatedly targeted Jewish financier George Soros, calling him the "billionaire plotting against France" in a 2018 frontpage headline.
In 2021, the publication was found guilty of racist hate speech after it published a fictional story and cartoons depicting one of the country's most prominent black MPs as a nude slave in chains and an iron collar.
Lejeune also endorsed far-right media commentator Eric Zemmour during his campaign for the presidency last year.
He is a close friend of Marion Marechal, the niece of far-right founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.
(with AFP)
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