[Marxism] An ex-Trotskyist's role in the crisis at Le Monde

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

November 24, 2004
THE CRISIS AT LE MONDE: THE INSIDE STORY

Le Monde -- once considered France’s pre-eminent daily, its “newspaper 
of reference,” a must-read in every European capital, and one of the 
planet’s most prestigious publications--is in the throes of a profound 
crisis.

Today's edition of the Parisian daily Liberation reports on the latest 
chapter in the crisis at Le Monde: rumors that its editor-in-chief, Edwy 
Plenel, could lose his job; a debt of 135 million Euros, with losses 
just this year of 35 million Euros; and, in consequence, a 
recapitalization of the newspaper that could bring in new investors who 
might threaten anew its legendary independence.

But the roots of the crisis began over a year ago, with the publication 
of a best-selling book that left the reputation of Le Monde for probity 
and rigor in its reporting in tatters, the ethics of the trio who today 
edit and control Le Monde under ferocious attack as unworthy of the 
leadership of a great daily, and its circulation in freefall as more and 
more once-loyal readers came to the conclusion that the six-decades old 
paper they loved and respected had lost its soul.

The crisis burst onto the public scene in a cloak-and-dagger ambiance 
worthy of a John LeCarre novel. On February 19, 2003 the weekly 
L’Express (roughly the French equivalent of Time) took the unusual step 
of advancing its normal publication date by a day to publish excerpts 
from an explosive new book, La face cachee du Monde (“The hidden face of 
Le Monde”, Editions Mille et Une Nuits).

The 630-page blockbuster had been prepared and published in great 
secrecy, for fear of economic and journalistic blackmail to prevent or 
censor its publication by Le Monde’s high command (whom the book’s 
subtitle accused of “abuse of power”). Indeed, the book’s publisher, 
Claude Durand--head of Fayard, of which Mille et Une Nuits is a 
subsidiary-- took the extraordinary precaution of having the book 
printed in Spain, both to maintain pre-publication secrecy and to avoid 
any possible sabotage attempts--by, among others, the CGT du Livre, the 
printers’ union whose allegiance to the current Le Monde leadership had 
been purchased with lucrative sweetheart contracts for its members (long 
Communist-dominated, the union had such censorious conduct in its history).

The Hidden Face of Le Monde, which overnight became a runaway 
best-seller, commanded widespread attention because it bore one of 
France’s most prestigious bylines: that of Pierre Pean, unquestionably 
the most important brand-name in France for quality investigative 
journalism. Given the often compromised and malleable nature of much of 
the French press, Pean--to preserve his independence--has always 
published his meticulous inquests in book form.

Pean’s many best-sellers include at least two books which changed French 
history: Une jeunesse francaise (Fayard, 1994), which made headlines 
when it revealed the reactionary and collaborationist past of the late 
Socialist President Francois Mitterand (including his long postwar 
friendship with Vichy’s former police head, Rene Bousquet, responsible 
for sending trainloads of Jews to their deaths in Nazi concentration 
camps); and Vies et morts de Jean Moulin (Fayard, 1998), which at long 
last unraveled the mystery of the death of the heroic French resistance 
leader at the hands of the war criminal Klaus Barbie, a martyrdom whose 
cause was only hinted at in Marcel Ophuls’ Oscar-winning Hotel Terminus, 
and Claude Berri’s film Lucie Aubrac (Pean demonstrated how Moulin’s 
capture was, in fact, orchestrated by reactionary elements of the 
resistance who hated both Moulin’s patron De Gaulle and his then-allies, 
the Communists).

Pean had been working on his investigation of Le Monde for a year when 
he learned that Philippe Cohen, who heads the Economy desk at the 
iconoclastic centrist weekly Marianne, was preparing a similar book. At 
the suggestion of publisher Durand, the two decided to join forces as 
co-authors.

In their book, Pean and Cohen delivered a devastating indictment of the 
tandem who now edit the paper: Jean-Marie Colombani, formerly the 
paper’s chief political reporter/editor, who became Le Monde’s CEO; and 
Edwy Plenel, a former police reporter who became the first head of its 
special investigations department, and who now directs day-to-day the 
paper’s editorial side.

They were a political odd couple. Colombani, of Corsican origin, a 
moderate social-Christian, soft-spoken and courteous, started as a 
television reporter and later built his career covering the 
arriere-cuisines  of French politics and cultivating politicians. Plenel 
is a sulfurous, intense, and temperamental autodidact, and of the two is 
the more talented and facile writer. He got his training in politics and 
journalism when, after his lycee (high school) graduation, he became a 
staffer for the publications of the Revolutionary Communist League 
(LCR), the largest of France’s three principal Trotskyist sects, where 
comrade “Krasny” (Plenel’s code name in the movement) stayed for a 
decade before joining Le Monde.

The two took control of Le Monde in a 1994 “putsch” that brought them to 
power. Le Monde had always been unique among the world’s great dailies 
because its legendary founder, Hubert Beuve-Mery, wanted to insure that 
journalists would always control the paper, and gave them--through the 
association of Le Monde journalists called the Societe des Redacteurs 
(SDR)--control of a majority of stock and the right to choose the 
paper’s directeur, or CEO, by election. Colombani had been plotting to 
take over the paper since the ‘80s, when he first presented himself for 
the paper ’s top post--and lost. In 1994, he finally won--with the help 
of the equally ambitious Plenel. No sooner had Colombani and Plenel 
taken control of the paper--which was operating at a loss--than they 
recapitalized it through a deal in which the SDR ceded majority control 
of the paper’s stock. The unique “journalists’ newspaper” thus became a 
business like any other, the SDR retaining a “blocking” one-third of the 
stock (a veto, however, which--under the iron rule of 
Colombani/Plenel--has so far not been used).

Colombani and Plenel’s partner in the financial restructuring of Le 
Monde was a free-market, anti-Statist propagandist for laisser-faire 
economics: Alain Minc, a pricey corporate consultant, best-selling 
author, and former industrialist who--despite having lost billions for a 
holding company he ran for the Italian magnate Carlo De Benedetti--had 
an unrivaled network of financial contacts and interests and a 
privileged position as counselor to France’s conservative governments 
and politicians. In the followup to the Colombani-Plenel putsch, Minc 
became Le Monde’s chairman of the board. To many at the paper--long 
firmly anchored in the humanist left--Minc’s arrrival was like putting 
the fox in charge of watching the chicken coop. (Not long ago, Minc was 
convicted in the French courts of flagrantly plagiarizing a university 
professor’s book about Spinoza for one of his own--and ordered to pay a 
whopping 100,000 francs in damages).

Within two years of taking power, Colombani and Plenel (with Minc’s 
support) had replaced virtually the entire editorial hierarchy with 
liegemen of their own choosing. United by their common thirst for 
power--not just over Le Monde, but the power to dictate France’s social, 
cultural, and political agenda--the trio first tried to choose the 
country’s next president. For the 1995 presidential campaign to succeed 
the ailing Mitterand, they turned the newspaper into a propaganda organ 
for the colorless, right-wing technocrat Edouard Balladur, long the 
right hand of Jacques Chirac, who became Chirac’s rival for leadership 
of France’s conservatives. (Minc was one of Balladur’s most prominent 
advisors). It was a shocking choice for many, both inside and outside 
the paper. And not just the paper’s editorials and op-ed pages were put 
at the service of Balladur--so too were its news columns. But Balladur 
turned out to be a wet firecracker--he lost ignominiously to Chirac.

To revive the paper’s stagnant circulation and anchor their 
agenda-making political power, Colombani and Plenel have used Le Monde’s 
front page to hype a series of scandals and scoops, often using 
headlines that promised more than the articles delivered. Rumors that 
later proved to be unfounded were presented as if they were established 
fact. Many of the paper’s “investigations” were quite shallow, 
frequently based more on leaks from friendly politicians and bureaucrats 
than on real journalistic legwork. This led to a state of affairs in 
which certain political figures useful to the paper’s leadership were 
considered “untouchable,” and benefited from highly indulgent treatment 
in the news columns. Among those pols: two hard-line conservative, 
law-and-order Ministers of the Interior, the unappetizing Charles Pasqua 
(ex-leader in the ‘60s of the paramilitary Gaullist strong-arm service, 
the SAC; and minister in the ‘80s and ‘90s; indicted earlier this year 
on corruption charges stemmming from illegal arms sales), and the the 
hyperambitious Balladurian Nicholas Sarkozy. (Already preparing his 
presidential campaign for 2007, for which the opinion polls show him in 
the lead, Sarkozy was just this month elected chairman of the ruling 
UMP--the Union for a Presidential Majority--the conservative party 
created for Chirac).

One of the more startling revelations of Pean and Cohen’s book: the 
incestuous relationship between Plenel and Bernard Delaplace, the head 
of the police union during the Mitterand years and so powerful that he 
was known as “the second cop in France,” after the Interior Minister. 
Unknown to Le Monde’s readers, Plenel served as Deleplace’s political 
and media counselor, ghostwriter, and de facto editor of the union’s 
journal. In return, “Deleplace asked police, when they weren’t 
officially working, to perform investigations on behalf of the Le Monde 
journalist,” the cops were paid for their moonlighting in cash, wrote 
Pean/Cohen, and the results helped advance Plenel’s reputation as one of 
France’s most ferocious “investigative” journalists. At the same time, 
Plenel used his Le Monde articles to promote and defend Delaplace. 
(Delaplace was eventually revealed to be a crook who took kickbacks from 
industry in the form of exorbitant commissions on ads in the union 
journal, and was forced to resign in disgrace in 1990 to avoid 
prosecution and prison--a fact which Le Monde to this day has yet to 
publish).

One of the more successful of Plenel’s “investigations” concerned the 
hidden Trotskyist past of Lionel Jospin, the Socialist prime minister 
from 1997-2002, which Jospin long denied (claiming he was being confused 
with his brother.) Plenel/“Krasny“, who even today calls himself a 
“cultural Trotskyist,” unearthed a raft of witnesses who swore that 
Jospin had been sent into the Socialist Party as a mole by the 
International Communist Organization (OCI), the most secretive, 
paranoid, and Bolshevik of the Trot sects (known as the Lambertistes 
after their pseudonymous leader, Pierre Lambert). Jospin continued to 
have intimate relations with the Lambertistes long after the newly 
elected Mitterand named Jospin to replace him as the head of the 
Socialist Party--a duplicity which Plenel exposed and denounced in Le 
Monde, and which destroyed Jospin’s reputation and credibility in 
advance of the 2002 presidential campaign (in which Jospin--who finally 
admitted his Trot past-- was edged out of the runoff by the neo-fascist 
Jean-Marie Le Pen).

Although Plenel, in a book of memoirs of his youth, claimed to have 
broken with the Trots of the LCR in the early ‘80s, Pean/Cohen assert 
that Plenel continued his intimate association with the LCR into the 
‘90s--and was thus guilty of the same deception for which the journalist 
had pilloried Jospin in the pages of Le Monde. Indeed, one of those who 
became a frequent Le Monde essayist after Colombani and Plenel took 
power was Daniel Ben-Said, the LCR’s chief ideological theorist (who was 
presented to Le Monde's readers as an "education expert" with no 
reference to his sectarian credentials). Plenel recruited and promoted 
many current and former ex-Trots and put them in key positions to insure 
his tight control over the newsroom--three of his five principal 
assistant editors are now from that Trot constellation. At the same 
time, the “new” Le Monde has given prominent place as “associate 
editorialists” to the likes of the ubiquitous neo-con intellectual 
Bernard-Henri Levy, and the prophet of globalization and untrammeled 
free-market economics Jean-Claude Casanova, one of the maitres a penser 
of the hard right. The Trots Plenel hired weren't brought in for their 
ideology, but for their Leninist modus operandi and loyalty to the 
"chief" (i.e., Plenel). Only the paper's foreign affairs department, 
long a sort of independent kingdom within the Le Monde empire, has 
managed, for the most part, to guard most of its prideful independence 
from management interference without seeing its integrity questioned.

full: http://direland.typepad.com/


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