PARIS: Around 500 leading writers, artists and activists, including US whistleblower Edward Snowden and novelist Salman Rushdie, on Friday signed an open letter supporting reporters at French daily Le Monde in their battle for guarantees of editorial independence.

France’s centre-left paper of record has been plunged into turmoil by the failure of Czech energy billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, who bought a stake in the broadsheet last year, to sign an agreement on the paper’s editorial freedom.

The journalists have given him until Sept 17 to sign the accord.

“At this time when even facts are being challenged, the liberty and independence of the press are more precious public assets than ever,” the open letter published on the website of Le Monde read, warning that the paper’s editorial freedom was “under threat”.

Journalists in the organisation feel their reporting on environment is under threat

Kretinsky last year bought a 49 per cent stake in a holding company owned by Matthieu Pigasse, one of Le Monde’s biggest shareholders.

The deal gave him a stake in the daily created just after the liberation of Paris in World War II at the request of wartime leader Charles de Gaulle.

His arrival sparked concern among a group of Le Monde journalists, readers, staff and founders that oversees the paper’s independence, with some expressing fears he could try to influence the paper’s reporting on the environment.

The “independence pole”, as the group is known, is demanding the right to veto any controlling shareholder of the paper.

One of the newspaper’s two major shareholders, French tech billionaire Xavier Niel, has already signed the agreement but Pigasse and Kretinsky have yet to do so.

Kretinsky has been on a French media buying spree recently, acquiring news weekly Marianne and other popular titles such as Elle magazine.

The daily reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website since Dec 1995, and is often the only French newspaper easily obtainable in non-French-speaking countries.

The paper’s journalistic side has a collegial form of organisation, in which most journalists are not only tenured, but financial stakeholders in the enterprise as well, and participate in the elections of upper management and senior executives.

In contrast to newspapers such as The New York Times, Le Monde was traditionally focused on offering analysis and opinion. Hence, it was considered less important for the paper to offer maximum coverage of the news than to offer thoughtful interpretation of current events.

In recent years, however, the paper has developed a greater distinction between fact and opinion.

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2019