Journalists at France’s only dedicated Sunday newspaper have ended the country’s longest media strike in decades, on the day a controversial editor aligned with the far right took up his post as editor in chief.
Staff at Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) said on Tuesday they were throwing in the towel knowing that their decision would mean they would either leave the paper or have to work under its new leadership.
The strike since 22 June over the appointment of Geoffroy Lejeune, 34, as editor in chief has meant the influential weekly missed six consecutive issues.
The newspaper’s SDJ journalists’ association said an agreement had been reached with its owners, the media arm of the French conglomerate Lagardère Group, for the strike to end.
It acknowledged staff would not have won a prolonged standoff with Lagardère.
Lejeune was until recently editor of the far-right weekly Valeurs Actuelles and endorsed the far-right media commentator Éric Zemmour during his campaign for the presidency last year.
“Today, Geoffroy Lejeune is taking up his post. He will walk into an empty newsroom. Dozens of journalists are refusing to work with him and must leave the JDD,” the association said. “In the next hours we will be confronted with a painful dilemma – to stay or to go,” it added.
The Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has said the action – which lasted 40 days – was the longest strike in French media since a 28-month strike by staff on Le Parisien daily that began in 1975.
Lagardère said in a statement that the JDD’s website would return on Tuesday and the print edition from the middle of the month. “The agreement also provides for the setting up of support measures for journalists who wish to leave the editorial staff,” it added.
The conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré is in the process of acquiring Lagardère, which also owns Paris Match magazine and Europe 1 radio, after a successful takeover bid.
Bolloré, a conservative Catholic from north-west France, has been gradually expanding his empire to take in TV channels and now print media.
The JDD, which has weekly sales of about 140,000, has in recent years toed a centrist line and been seen as generally sympathetic to the government of President Emmanuel Macron.
Source : The Guardian