Thursday, November 25, 2004
Doug Ireland and Le Monde. posted by Richard Seymour
A very fine piece of reporting at Direland on the degeneration of the once redoubtle French newspaper Le Monde. Unlike me, Doug speaks fluent French, and he has managed to excavate some very telling stories about the paper. Tracing an arc of decline that began in 1994, he outlines the taking over of a paper once owned by journalists who jealously guarded it as a quality centre-left newspaper by an ambitious Colombani, the ex-Trotskyist Plenel and their free market fundamentalist partner Alain Minc. The journalists, having succumbed to their serenading and ceded control of a majority of stocks to the terrible trio, watched their paper's quality, reputation and sales go into free-fall.As Doug says, "The unique 'journalists’ newspaper' thus became a business like any other".
For those interested in the media and the structures which distort news reporting, this is an invaluable insight. I strongly urge you to read it in full.