30 November 2004 Blog Home : November 2004 : Permalink
Roger L Simon points to an Independant article about the precarious state of French newspapers, especially at the quality end, and asks for comment from France. To put it bluntly I know almost no one who regularly reads any national French newspaper. Now it is true that I am an expat and therefore biased because many of my acquaintainces are not French, but contrariwise my French acquaintances are generally speaking the more educated sort who ought to read newspapers so that ought to balance.
This general lack of readership is reflected in the abysmal circulation figures - Le Monde and Le Figaro both sell 350,000-400,000 (figures from this source) and Liberation sells less than half that. Even if you throw in La Croix and L'Humanité (<100,000 each) the full "highbrow" newspaper sales is about 1 million per day, a large chunk of which seems to given away for free by Air France and other airlines - certainly that's the only time I ever either read a French newspaper or see anyone else reading one.
There are lowerbrow papers such as L'Equipe for sports and France Soir, as well as the various regional papers such as my local (and abysmal) Nice Matin, but throwing all those in together still gives a total circulation of all French newspapers of around 3 million - maybe 4 million if you're lucky and include absolutely everything that attempts to be a daily newspaper. The weeklies, such as L'Express and Paris Match do a bit better, but still have a fairly dire penetration rate.
For comparison the UK equivalent highrows - Times, Grauniad, Torygraph and Independant - sell over 2 million, double that of France, and that excludes the middle brow Mail and Express (another 3 million combined). Adding the low brow Sun, Star and Mirror (over 5 million more), the London Evening Standard, the various free and regional papers and anything else that counts as a daily paper you have a total circulation of well over 11 million. I'm guessing the total would be over 12 million. I admit to some rounding and WAGs in that number, but the 11 million is definitely a lowball number given these figures. The UK and France have roughly similar total populations (approx 60 million) so the difference in numbers - France having 50% of the UK circulation of highbrows and about a third of the total circulation - is rather striking.
In the UK the newspapers are owned by a variety of different companies that if they do not own purely UK newspapers are still media companies, for example Rupert Murdoch's News Corp owns the Times and the Sun and until recently the Torygraph was owned by Conrad Black's Hollinger group. There are very few, if any, tax breaks, no subsidies and no price limits.
In France, the French state subsidizes its newspapers to the tune of around €50-60 million (or possibly more) and fixes their prices. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the French press is less likely to be critical of its government seeing as the government pays a significant chunk of its revenue. Likewise the ownership of the French newspapers is in groups such as Hachette which are linked to the major bastions of French industry. If you think that this might possibly influence the depth and breadth of reporting then you would not be alone. The lack of competition between news groups and the fact that many French journalists attended the same universities as French politicians and bureaucrats (and captains of industry for that matter) is just icing on the cake for those seatching for an explanation of why the French press is so docile compared to its cross-channel peers.
So a tame press fails to provide interesting news which leads to a declining readership which leads to low advertising rates which leads to less money which makes the journalist even less likely to take a risk investgating something controversial. Is it any surprise that the French public is remarkably cynical about their journalists? and is it any wonder that the journalists appear so spineless?
I forgot to mention that archaic union rules and the like of the sort that Mr Murdoch got rid of some 20 years ago in England don't precisely help matters but really it hardly seems sporting to mention these issues, given that the press is so dire anyway.