He is not a candidate at all, but the man often described as France’s Rupert Murdoch: Vincent Bolloré,
the billionaire whose conservative media empire has complicated Mr.
Macron’s carefully plotted path to re-election by propelling the far-right candidacy of Éric Zemmour, the biggest star of Mr. Bolloré’s Fox-style news network, CNews.
“Bolloré’s channels have largely created Zemmour,” François Hollande, France’s former president, said in an interview.
But
Mr. Zemmour’s emergence is just the latest example of the power of
France’s media tycoons, Mr. Bolloré most prominent among them, to shape
political fortunes. In a nation with very strict campaign finance laws,
control over the news media has long provided an avenue for the very
rich to influence elections.
“If
you’re a billionaire, you can’t entirely finance a campaign,” said Julia
Cagé, an economist specializing in the media at Sciences Po, “but you
can buy a newspaper and put it at the disposal of a campaign.”
In
the long run-up to the current campaign, the competition for influence
has been especially frenzied, with some of France’s richest men locked
in a fight over some of the nation’s top television networks, radio
stations and publications.
The
emergence of Mr. Bolloré, in particular, has intensified the jockeying
in this election season as he buys up media properties and turns them
into news outlets pushing a hard right-wing agenda.
The
phenomenon is new in the French media landscape, and it has prompted
fierce jostling among other billionaires for media holdings. It has been
the hidden drama behind the 2022 elections, with some of the media
billionaires angling strongly against Mr. Macron, and others in support
of him.
On one side are Mr. Bolloré and his media
group, Vivendi; on the other are billionaires regarded as Mr. Macron’s
allies, including Bernard Arnault, the head of the LVMH luxury empire.
The political reach of media tycoons has become enough of a concern that the French Senate has opened an inquiry.
In hearings broadcast live in January and February, they all denied any
political motive. Mr. Bolloré said his interests were “purely economic.” Mr. Arnault said his investments in the news media were akin to “patronage.”
But
there is little doubt that their media holdings give them leverage that
France’s campaign finance laws would otherwise deny them. In France, political TV ads are not allowed in the six months before an election. Corporate donations to candidates are banned.
Personal gifts to a campaign are limited to 4,600 euros, or about
$5,000. In this election cycle, presidential candidates cannot spend
more than €16.9 million each, or about $18.5 million, on their campaigns
for the first round; the two finalists are then limited to a total of
€22.5 million each, or about $24.7 million. By comparison, when he was a
presidential candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr. raised more than $1 billion
for his 2020 campaign.
“Why
do you think that these French capitalists whose names you know buy Le
Monde, Les Echos, Le Parisien?” Jean-Michel Baylet, whose family has
owned a powerful group of newspapers in southwest France for
generations, said in an interview, mentioning some of the country’s
biggest newspapers.
“They’re
buying influence,” said Mr. Baylet, a former minister of territorial
cohesion, who himself has been accused of using his media outlets to
advance a parallel career in politics — a charge he denies.
The control of media by industrialists,
whose core businesses depend on government contracts in construction or
defense, amounts to “a conflict of interests,” said Aurélie Filippetti,
who oversaw the media sector as a minister of culture.
Armed with media properties, businessmen enjoy leverage over politicians.
“Politicians
are always afraid that newspapers will fall into unfriendly hands,”
said Claude Perdriel, the main shareholder of Challenges, a weekly
magazine, who said that he made sure to sell his previous outlets,
including the magazine L’Obs, to other businessmen who shared his
left-leaning politics.
For Mr. Macron,
that is what happened when early this year Jérôme Béglé, who is a
frequent guest on CNews, took over the Journal du Dimanche, a Sunday
newspaper once so pro-Macron that it was called the “Pravda”
of the government. After Mr. Bolloré gained control over the
newspaper’s parent company last fall, it began publishing critical
articles and unflattering photos of Mr. Macron.
It recently zeroed in on what right-wing
competitors consider the most vulnerable aspect of Mr. Macron’s record:
his crime policy, which the publication referred to as a failure and his “Achilles’ heel.”
Though
not widely read, the newspaper enjoys a following among the French
political and economic elite and an agenda-setting role. “It’s one of
the two or three most influential newspapers,” said Gaspard Gantzer, a
presidential spokesman under Mr. Hollande.
One
of Mr. Bolloré’s television channels, the youth-oriented C8, has served
as a powerful echo chamber for promoting far-right ideas. A recent study by the CNRS,
France’s national research organization, showed that from September to
December last year, C8’s most popular show devoted 53 percent of its
time to the far right and to one figure in particular: Mr. Zemmour.
But it is through CNews,
created in 2017 after his takeover of the Canal Plus network, that Mr.
Bolloré continues to extend his influence in the final stretches of the
campaign. With its ability to shape the national debate around issues
like immigration, Islam and crime, CNews quickly grew into a new, and
feared, political force in France. It made Mr. Zemmour, a newspaper
reporter and best-selling author, a star.
“We’re obviously quite worried about the
editorial line of this type of media,” said Sacha Houlié, a lawmaker and
a spokesman for the Macron campaign. “We keep an eye on it.”
According to a study
co-written by Ms. Cagé, about 22 percent of the speaking time on CNews
was filled by far-right guests during the 2019-2020 season, a 200
percent increase compared with the situation before Mr. Bolloré took
over.
But Mr. Macron is not without
allies. Two other billionaires — Mr. Arnault, the chief executive of
LVMH and France’s richest man; and Xavier Niel, the telecommunications
tycoon and the partner of Mr. Arnault’s daughter — have both publicly
expressed support for Mr. Macron in the past.
Mr.
Niel, Mr. Arnault and Yannick Bolloré, Mr. Bolloré’s son and the
chairman of Vivendi’s supervisory board, declined interview requests for
this article.
Mr. Arnault owns Les
Echos, the country’s leading business newspaper, and Le Parisien, one of
its most popular dailies, both of which have been barely critical of
Mr. Macron. Mr. Arnault also entered into a confrontation against Mr.
Bolloré in a long, drawn-out battle for control over an ailing media
group, Lagardère.
Mr. Bolloré eventually won control over Lagardère, and its radio
station, Europe 1, was quickly turned into an audio version of CNews.
Wary of Mr. Bolloré’s influence, the Macron government has sought to counter him.
When
Mr. Bolloré tried last year to buy M6, a private French television
channel owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, the
government sided with one of Mr. Bolloré’s rivals: Bouygues, the owner
of TF1, France’s biggest television channel.
Most
government officials expressed support for the deal — except the head
of the antitrust authority whose mandate was subsequently not renewed,
contrary to expectations. If the merger of TF1 and M6 goes through, it
would create a giant controlling 70 percent of France’s television
advertising.
Mr. Houlié, the spokesman
for the Macron campaign, said that the government’s endorsement of the
TF1-M6 deal was intended to create a counterweight to Canal Plus, Mr.
Bolloré’s network.
Still, it is Mr. Bolloré who has perhaps had the greatest effect on this season’s campaign.
“He allowed the creation of a Zemmour
candidacy,” said Alexis Lévrier, a media historian at the University of
Reims, adding that it illustrated the power of media tycoons — which, in
this case, has resulted in a candidacy that has pushed talk on Islam
and immigration to extremes.
“That,” he said, “makes the script of this campaign fascinating and frightening.”
Bernard Arnault,
the head of the LVMH luxury empire, with President Emmanuel Macron of
France in Paris last year. He is regarded as an ally of Mr. Macron.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/world/europe/france-presidential-election-media-cnews-.html?smid=tw-share
