The Minister of Culture expressed her deep concern for “republican values” over the situation of the Sunday newspaper, which is on strike to prevent the expected arrival of a new director marked by the extreme right. “My Sunday ritual was to wake up to the JDD. He does not appear today,” Rima Abdul-Malak wrote on social media.
The newspaper, controlled by Vincent Bolloré, has been closed since Thursday and the strike vote prevented its publication on Sunday. It was renewed on Saturday night through Wednesday almost unanimously. In question, the arrival of Geoffroy Lejeune, fired from the far-right weekly Current Values, as editor.
Thirty SDJ from the main media sign a platform of support
Official since Friday night, this arrival is a “red line” for the newsroom, believes the journalists’ society (SDJ) of the JDD, which asks the management to renounce this appointment. “The JDD newsroom refuses to be led by a man whose ideas are in total contradiction with the values of the newspaper,” he added. The writing of the JDD fears that a method already denounced elsewhere in the media controlled by Vincent Bolloré will be repeated: waltz of the leaders and interventions in the editorial line, they fear that it will turn towards the extreme right, at the cost of a possible hemorrhage of journalists.
On Sunday, some thirty companies of journalists from the main media, including France Télévisions, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Le Parisien, Liberation, Radio France and even Paris Match, gave their support to the striking JDD journalists, in a column published in Mediaparte.
Under Lejeune’s direction, the weekly was sentenced to a suspended fine of 1,000 euros for public insult of a racist nature against LFI deputy Danièle Obono. In question, an article and a drawing published in August 2020 under the title “Obono the African”, where the elected official of Gabonese origin was represented as a slave.
Source: BFM TV
