Le Figaro - Controversy About Editorial Independence

Controversy About Editorial Independence

Controversial both inside and outside the newspaper is its ownership by a person who also controls a major military supplier, as well as being a mayor and senator from the ruling Union for a Popular Movement party, whose son Olivier Dassault is a member of the French National Assembly for the same party. In response, Dassault remarked in an interview on the public radio station France Inter, that "newspapers must promulgate healthy ideas" and that "left-wing ideas are not healthy ideas."

In February 2012, a general assembly of the newspaper's journalists adopted a motion accusing the paper's managing editor, Étienne Mougeotte, of having made Le Figaro into the "bulletin" of the governing party, the Union for a Popular Movement, of the government and of President Nicolas Sarkozy. They requested more pluralism and "honesty" rather than one-sided political reporting. Mougeotte had previously said that Le Figaro would do nothing to embarrass the government and the right. Mougeotte publicly replied:

Our editorial line pleases our readers as it is, it works. I don't see why I should change it. We are a right-wing newspaper and we express it clearly, by the way. Our readers know it, our journalists too. There's nothing new to that!