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This
profile considers French newspapers Libération
and L'Humanité.
It covers -
Libération
Libération was founded by Jean-Paul Sartre,
Serge July and associates (including members of la Gauche
Prolétarienne) in 1973 Paris as a national daily
to the left of Le Monde.
Its title reflected the name of several Resistance newssheets.
Libération Sud was launched in July 1941
and ran for 52 issues before becoming Libération
- in alignment with the Parti Communist Français
(PCF) - and expiring after the withdrawal of funds when
the PCF faced a financial crisis in the early 1960s. Libération
Nord, first published in October 1940, reached 190
issues as an underground sheet, became Libé-soir
and disappeared in the early 1950s.
Libération has famously claimed to be
an heir of the May 1968 protests, even as - like several
of the more prominent gauchistes - it has become a comfortable
member of the French establishment
July boasted
in 1998 that in the 1970s
Libération's
happy medium consisted of combining counter-culture
with a radical political approach, in the same way as
the magazine Rolling Stone
and
that it is now
a
mouthpiece for democratic modernisation. In France,
in 1968, there was a deep contradiction between progress
in the country's economic modernisation and the struggling
democratic and cultural modernisation. Today, France
still lags behind with regard to its institutions and
the way democracy works. Libération
has an important rôle to play in these areas,
but also at the cultural and social levels. In this
regard, Libération is always at the
forefront of all that is new, of innovation, of "what's
happening". So, to a certain extent, we are the
paper of change and not just political change and politicking
Libération's
parent - SA Investissements Press (SAIP) - was bailed
out by Pathé in
1996. As of August 2004 around 21% is held by Pathé
(down from 64% in the late 1990s), 23% by staff associations
(primarily its leading journalists) and 14% by a holding
company whose members include "celebrities".
It has a national distribution with a daily circulation
of around 150,000.
In January 2005 Liberation staff agreed to let
financier Edouard de Rothschild take a 37% stake in return
for a €20 million cash injection. The ironies of
haut finance continued in 2007, when a 30% stake
was acquired by prince Carlo Caracciolo, one of the founders
of the L'Espresso publishing
group in Italy.
Humanité
L'Humanité was founded in 1904 by the
Socialist Party leader Jean Jaurès (1859-1914).
During the 1920 split between the Socialists and the PCF
control of Humanité passed to the PCF
as a counterpart of Italy's L'Unita. It has remained
that party's main organ of public enlightenment.
Humanité's history has had the same trajectory
as the PCF. During the 1920s it was apparently funded
by sales, substantial support from Moscow and donations
by PCF members. Creation of the Popular Front under Leon
Blum in 1934 saw an improvement in its circulation and
a reduction of visceral attacks on local/external enemies
such as Leon Trotsky and Andre Gide.
It was suppressed when the PCF supported the Soviet-German
Non-Aggression Pact in 1939, reappeared once the Germans
arrived in Paris (issues in 1940 urged fraternization
between French workers and Wehrmach personnel) but unsurprisingly
turned against the Germans following the 1941 invasion
of the USSR, appearing as an underground sheet until 1944.
During the late 1940s and 1950s L'Humanité
enjoyed a large circulation, reflecting both the PCF's
dominance of the left and support from the USSR (including
access to funds and free newsprint). As in the 1920s and
30s it was noted for its rigorous commitment to the party
line, for example denouncing criticisms of the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia and suppression of dissent
in East German and attacking Mao's China after the Sino-Soviet
split.
Collapse of the USSR and ongoing erosion of the PCF's
electoral base amid irrelevant policies and internicine
disagreements about orthodoxy were reflected in declining
circulation, now down to 48,000 from a peak of over 500,000
during the 1950s.
During 2001 the PCF sold 20% of Humanité
to private investors that included Hachette
and Bouygues (the engineering
and telecommunications conglomerate that controls the
TF1 tv channel). As of 2004 the PCF has a 40% stake; many
of the remaining shares are held by staff and 'friends'
of the paper.
studies
Richard Barbrook's Media Freedom: The Contradictions
of Communications in the Age of Modernity (London:
Pluto Press 1995) and Marc Martin's Medias et journalistes
de la Republique (Paris: Editions Odile Jacob 1997)
consider the French regulatory environment and media concentration.
There is a more detailed account in the five volume Histoire
Générale de la Presse Française (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France 1969-1976) by Claude Bellanger, Jacques Godechot,
Pierre Guiral & Fernand Terrou. Raymond Kuhn's concise
The Media in France (London: Routledge 1995) is
also of particular value.
For Libération see the self-congratulatory
and glossy Libération 1973-2003: Almanach des
trente ans (Paris: Calmann-Lévy 2004) by Serge
July. Perspectives are offered by Sunil Khilnani's Arguing
the Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France
(New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1993), Bernard-Henri Levy's
Adventures on the Freedom Road: The French Intellectuals
in the 20th Century (London: Harvill 1995) and Annie
Cohen-Solal's Sartre: A Life (London: Heinemann
1987).
For Humanité's milieu see The French
Socialist Party (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1988) and
The French Communist Party in the Fifth Republic
(Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1994) by David Bell & Byron
Criddle, Histoire du Parti communiste français
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1995) by Stephane
Courtois & Marc Lazar and The Long March of the
French Left (London: Macmillan 1981) by Richard Johnson.
Soviet involvement is highlighted in Double Lives:
Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals
(New York: Free Press 1994) by Stephen Koch, the
more persuasive The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography
of Willy Munzenberg, Moscow's Secret Propaganda Tsar in
the West, 1917-1940 (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 2003)
by Sean McMeekin and L'Argent de Moscou: L'histoire
la plus secrete du PCF (Paris: Plon 1994) by Victor
Loupan & Pierre Lorrain.
chronology
1904 Jaures founds L'Humanité
1920 PCF gains control of L'Humanité
1973 JP Sartre & Serge July found Libération
1995 establishment of Holzmann Association
1996 SA Investissements Press comes under control of Pathé
2001 Bouygues, Hachette
and others buy 20% of L'Humanité
2001 Pathé reduces stake in Liberation
to 21.77%
2004 Edouard de Rothschild offers €20m for 37% stake
in Liberation
2005 Libération accepts
Rothschild offer
2007 Carlo Caracciolo takes 30% stake in Libération
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Caslon