The year 2024 was marked in France by a rare campaign against media owned by the conservative Catholic billionaire Vincent Bolloré. His media outlets were accused of disseminating false information, manipulating opinion, and breaching the ethics of ‘journalistic neutrality.’ But it seems the rules are not the same for everyone: at the start of 2025, the French left-wing media have no qualms about publicly unveiling their agenda to control public opinion—this time, on their terms and in the service of their ideas—and they see no reason to be concerned about it.
The French media—particularly the press and television—have over the last few years undergone a massive process of consolidation and are now in the hands of a few large fortunes that own and more or less tightly control the majority of the private press outlets and television channels, which also receive public funding.
In this landscape, one man has set about methodically shattering the consensus of political correctness: Vincent Bolloré. Born into an old Breton family known for its involvement in the service of Free France during the Second World War, and with deep roots in the Brittany region, Bolloré has built a reputation as a solid man who cares little about what people say—or about pressure from the mainstream media.
With his undeniable business acumen, he runs successful companies, which, in the eyes of the Left, is one of his greatest flaws. In recent years, he has focused on the media, building a small empire that allows him to broadcast an alternative viewpoint to that of public service outlets. After setting his sights on television with the CNews channel, which has become France’s leading news channel ahead of the established BFM TV channel, he has conquered prime positions in radio with the Europe 1 station. Finally, he challenged the print media by buying the widely circulated Le Journal du Dimanche, typically used by politicians of all stripes to communicate with the French public through interviews.
Crimes such as these are not easily forgiven by the dominant media court. Throughout 2024, the attacks on the ‘Bolloré galaxy’ multiplied, to the point of leading to a parliamentary enquiry into its ‘actions’ and the danger it allegedly represents to French democracy. His group’s media outlets have been hit with a host of sanctions, including warnings from the ARCOM media regulatory authority and the eviction of one of his channels from the DTT network.
Bolloré has taken note of this decision but is not a man to be taken lightly. In retaliation, Bolloré announced that he was withdrawing all his pay-TV channels from DTT—including those that had not been convicted—thus saving more than €20 million each year in fees and taxes. Bolloré is a free man, and his dazzling success obviously gives him the means to achieve this freedom.
The owner of CNews has also become the prime target of attacks by the leftist media, draped in the dignified toga of the defender of democracy in danger. And any means are justified to accomplish this supposedly noble goal—including the use of the very weapons they accuse their adversary of employing.
Case in point: on Monday, January 13th, a lengthy interview with newspaper owner Matthieu Pigasse by left-wing newspaper Libération. Pigasse, a former investment banker, is a key figure in the French media landscape since he is the co-owner of the newspaper Le Monde, considered in France to be the daily reference in management circles. In this interview, Pigasse reveals his game with startling clarity. He explains: “I want to bring the media I control into the fight against the radical right.”
Every word of this statement needs to be weighed and assessed at its true value. Such words from Vincent Bolloré would have caused a major scandal. “I want”; “the media I control”; “the fight.” The objective is clearly stated, the ideological offensive carried out without shame or hidden agenda. Pigasse openly acknowledges what everyone already knows: the left-wing press, which hides behind the label of a generalist press with supposedly benevolent neutrality, is waging a merciless war against ideas it deems ‘nauseating.’ But he has the right to do so because he is on the side of ‘good’—which is obviously not the case with Bolloré.
Matthieu Pigasse produces a number of news programmes on the French public television network, including “C à vous,” “C ce soir,” and “C dans l’air,” with another media magnate, Xavier Niel, a former friend of socialist President François Mitterrand. He has no qualms about “controlling” the journalists who appear on these programmes, which are also publicly funded, and putting “his financial interests at the service of his ideas.” Neutrality is clearly not a requirement for everyone.
Pigasse is revealing his cards because he has a vague feeling that the game is not as easy to play as it used to be. At the global level, the tide is turning under the blows of a triad he denounces, “MMT”—for Milei, Musk, and Trump. In Europe, Musk’s management of the X platform is forcing the European Union authorities, destabilised by a discourse that is no longer unequivocal, to openly admit that they, too, want to control public opinion.
In France, the conservative camp, strengthened by the success of Bolloré and his emulators, no longer intends to let this happen. Last summer, the activist group Les Corsaires, fighting for freedom of expression, attacked the TMC channel and its mainstream programme “Quotidien”—known for its merciless treatment of right-wing contributors—for its misleading coverage of a press conference by Jordan Bardella. Les Corsaires succeeded in obtaining at the very least a formal reprimand from ARCOM against the presenter, on the grounds that he “violated the integrity of the information.”
This week, MEP Laurence Trochu, who belongs to the Identité-Libertés movement founded by Marion Maréchal, referred the Matthieu Pigasse interview to ARCOM, the media regulatory authority, since Pigasse admits to using French people’s money to support his own ideological struggle.
Will ARCOM go after Matthieu Pigasse, a prey of a different calibre than the “Quotidien” host? It is to be feared that he will not be disturbed and that he will continue to receive public funds for the media he ‘controls,’ which dutifully distil the authorised doctrine. But let’s rejoice: we can already say that the dominant consensus of political correctness has now been broken.
