Published June 28, 2021 at 12.17
Media. The radio giant Europe 1 was for a long time the obvious choice for France's politically correct. But since the new owner Vincent Bolloré tried to reach new listener groups, there has been a civil war on the radio. The journalists are on strike and Macron is sending in its own oligarchs to buy up shares in the company and prevent the channel from becoming more conservative, writes the left-wing newspaper Jacobin Mag.
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In 2016, Bolloré's media company Vivendi bought into the TV giant Cnews, which has since been given a more conservative focus. Now the French government and French authorities are trying to prevent something similar from happening to Europe 1, after his company bought into the radio channel's owner company Lagardère.
France's media authority has been hesitant to enter the ownership battle, but according to Jacobin Magazine, President Emmanuel Macron's entourage is said to have been behind Bernard Arnault's sudden increase in his stake in the company.
Arnault is a typical French left-wing oligarch the newspaper is said to have been commissioned by Macron to act as a counterweight to Bolloré. The aim should be to prevent a conservative media player from preparing for the 2022 presidential election.
An employee of one of Vincent Bolloré's former media companies says that between 2007 and 2012, when she worked there, there was an informal agreement to keep reporting on Marine Le Pen and France's nationalist right to an absolute minimum. But the political landscape has changed since then and now the plan is by all accounts to reach the very groups that then voted on the National Front.
“Since 2016, after the collapse of France's traditional bloc policy, the changes in the billionaire's media ownership have also taken a new direction. Whether due to pure opportunism or genuine conviction, Bolloré has invested its money in creating a right-wing extremist pole in the media landscape,” writes Jacobin Magazine.
On June 18, the channel's left-wing journalists decided to simply strike in protest against the channel's new owners. “We refuse to be a new Cnews”, is one of the slogans. A new “Fox News” was also alleged to be underway.
– What Cnews is doing is giving certain types of people on the right wing a platform. Or yes, “on the right” is a little too nice. It is about people within the far right, says the left-wing newspaper's source among the striking journalists.
When Bolloré bought Cnews in 2016, the existing left-wing journalists also went on strike, but this did not lead to any changes. And so it seems to be this time as well.
On Wednesday, the strike was called off after the management offered left-wing journalists who want to quit certain financial benefits in exchange for them leaving the company voluntarily, according to Jacobin Magazine.