"‘We fight on’: fears for France’s Sunday paper over editor with far-right ties - Bitter strike at Journal du Dimanche ends with staff exodus – and arrival of Geoffroy Lejeune, a supporter of leading xenophobe Eric Zemmour"
"More than half the journalists at France’s only standalone Sunday newspaper have resigned after failing to prevent the arrival of an editor with far-right ties in a bitter dispute that has fanned fears of a further US-style polarisation of the country’s media.
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"In particular the company refused to contemplate committing not to publish “racist, sexist and homophobic statements and, more generally, any discriminatory or hateful content”, a guarantee the association had demanded given Lejeune’s past record."
“We didn’t win,” said Antoine Malo, a roving foreign correspondent at the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) and member of its editorial association. “We didn’t stop him, and now there’s a mass exodus. But the bigger fight will go on – from outside.”
The mainstream paper’s 100-odd journalists ended a 40-day strike – the longest media strike in France since the 1970s – on Tuesday after Geoffroy Lejeune, previously editor of the far-right weekly Valeurs Actuelles, took up his post as editor-in-chief.
The 34-year-old is a leading supporter of the xenophobic polemicist Eric Zemmour, who ran for the French presidency in 2022, promotes the racist “great replacement” theory, and has been investigated 16 times – and convicted on three occasions – for hate speech."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/06/we-fight-on-fears-for-frances-sunday-paper-over-rightwing-editor-geoffroy-lejeune