AFR Business

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, adopted by France in 1789 to enshrine the principles of the French Revolution, noted that “the free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely”.

Today’s French constitution echoes that same defence of the “freedom, pluralism and independence of the media”.

And yet, media pluralism is at risk in France. Yes, in France.

This may surprise outsiders who tend to think of Poland or Hungary when considering threats to media freedom in Europe.

But pluralism is also an issue in France because of the expanding reach and power of the Bolloré Group. This family-owned conglomerate is already the principal shareholder of Vivendi, a global company that owns leading assets in television and movies, in advertising, PR, publishing and in digital content distribution. The Bolloré Group is now trying through Vivendi to acquire its rival the Lagardère Group, a merger that can only go through if it is approved by the European Commission.

If Vivendi succeeds – it has steadily increased its shareholding in Lagardère since 2020 – Bolloré would additionally take full control of one of the main French private radio stations, Europe 1, two of the country’s main weekly newspapers, Le Journal du Dimanche and Paris Match, and Hachette, a leader in the French and Europeanbook publishing industry. Vivendi already owns Editis, France’s second biggest publisher.

Vincent Bolloré, Vivendi’s main shareholder, is a billionaire media mogul who is accused of using his grip of the news media to try to influence French elections. Most notoriously, he gave the rightwing presidential candidate Éric Zemmour a platform of several hours a week on CNews, the 24-hour TV news channel often said by its critics to be modelled on Rupert Murdoch’s conservative US TV channel, Fox News.

In November 2021, the French senate established a commission of inquiry into media ownership concentration, which looked into the rising power of Bolloré. While Bolloré’s critics claim that he poses a real danger to press freedom, the inquiry came up with no solutions.

Earlier this month, the parliamentarian Louis Boyard filed a complaint against Cyril Hanouna, the star host of Bolloré’s channel C8, for insulting him on air (Hanouna called the MP “a piece of shit” and “a buffoon”). Hanouna’s show goes on, as if nothing happened.

With the failure of yet another French bill aimed at curbing media concentration, any hope appears to be in the hands of the EU. Margrethe Vestager, the competition commissioner, will deliver her decision on whether to approve the merger or conduct a full inquiry on 30 November.

Vestager has said that the buyout will be examined from a competition standpoint; in other words, she will not take account of how Bolloré’s media gave oxygen to far-right ideas. Nor will she allow for accusations against Bolloré of involvement in censoring content (most notably regarding his business activities in Africa), influencing what appears on the cover of magazines and firing journalists who have tried to stand up to him. Questioned by the senate committee, Bolloré, who officially handed over control of Vivendi to his sons earlier this year, but retains his shareholding and an advisory role, denied ever meddling in editorial choices.

The decision will be taken from the competition standpoint. So be it. And yet, information is a public good, and thus cannot be reduced to market share alone. Media pluralism is essential to safeguard the quality of information available and ensure that audiences are exposed to a variety of competing voices and perspectives. The proposed merger would put one man in control of news reaching a third of the French adult population. If the deal is cleared, French citizens will get a less diverse and informative news diet.

Competition authorities have a regulatory duty to protect consumers from such a significant loss of pluralism. This was made clear in the 2018 decision of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on the attempted acquisition by the Murdoch-controlled 21st Century Fox of the broadcaster Sky. Murdoch, who already in the UK market controlled the Times and the Sun, wanted to gain full control over Sky. The proposed deal was OK in a narrow anti-trust sense because the companies were active on different platforms.

But in its decision the CMA said it would not be in the public interest, noting that “the consideration of media plurality goes to the heart of our democratic process and as such is given particular protection in legislation”.

The CMA used the UK media regulator Ofcom’s definition of media plurality, pointing out the need to prevent “any one media owner, or voice, having too much influence over public opinion and the political agenda”. Given that Bolloré has in the past hardly concealed his desire for editorial influence at the media outlets owned by his group, we might have legitimate concerns that this acquisition could reduce the diversity of viewpoints available to the French public.

The European Commission could argue that pluralism is the responsibility of national regulatory authorities, not of Brussels. But the relevant French law, which dates back to 1986, is no longer adequate to guarantee media pluralism in the digital age.

Perhaps even more important, Arcom, the French media regulator, has repeatedly fallen short as a regulator and as a guarantor of pluralism. We need the European commissioner for competition to intervene on behalf of pluralism in France.

Even if we leave aside issues linked to the publishing industry, the acquisition raises competition issues for the news media. Via the Prisma Group, which owns a range of popular weekly and monthly magazines, Vivendi already reaches more than 16 million adults in France on a regular basis – nearly 30% of the adult population.

If it were also to take control of Le Journal du Dimanche (with a readership of 1.2 million) and Paris Match (with 2.6 million), it would far exceed the 10% threshold introduced by new European regulations, and even be well above what an old-style market share approach would allow.

Beyond the media, Vivendi owns assets in communications, advertising and publishing, with increasing synergies between its different activities. It owns a booking agency as well as a show and concert promoter for music artists and standup comedians. So we see Vivendi-promoted artists on the front pages of Vivendi-owned magazines. Journalists such as Laurence Ferrari appear across the different media companies owned by the group: Ferrari presents a show on CNews TV, another on the radio channel Europe 1 and, since September, is editor-in-chief of Paris Match’s political service.

Regulating media concentration and ensuring media pluralism raises challenges in the digital age. But we can save pluralism. Vivendi can be blocked just as the UK blocked the Sky and 21st Century Fox merger in 2018.

If media pluralism is at risk now in France, it could soon be in jeopardy in other countries. We have no choice but to rethink competition entirely, in particular in an era when disinformation is undermining democracy. We can no longer simply think of fair competition as an issue of market share but also need to take into account attention share. What is at stake today is not just the media in France but our collective ability to redefine media pluralism and market power in a new geopolitical context, where democracy itself is more fragile than ever.

Julia Cagé is associate professor of economics at Sciences Po Paris and research fellow of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). She co-wrote this article with Andrea Prat, Columbia University and CEPR; Charles Angelucci, Massachussetts Institute of Technology; Ruben Durante, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, and Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies; Nicola Fontana, University of Dublin; Gregory Martin, Stanford University; Nicola Mastrorocco, University of Bologna; Eli Noam, Columbia Institute for Tele-Information and Columbia University Business School; Maria Petrova, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, and ICREA; Thomas Philippon, New York University, Stern School of Business; Anya Schiffrin, Columbia University; Andrey Simonov, Columbia Business School; Camille Urvoy, University of Mannheim; Tommaso Valletti, Imperial College London

I generally avoid news about the royals. So it was a real eye-opener to find myself at the centre of a royal story. At a reception on Tuesday to honour those working to end violence against women and girls, I witnessed racist remarks from a member of the royal household directed at my friend and fellow activist, Ngozi Fulani. Lady Hussey’s prolonged interrogation about where Ngozi was really from, what her nationality was and where her people were from, was not – as many people have insisted to me over the past 24 hours – the kind of well-meaning curiosity that all of us experience from time to time (though it’s possible that Hussey believed that it was).

“Hackney” was Ngozi’s answer, but Hussey refused to accept this. Her response implied that Black and brown people couldn’t really be British. It implied that we were trespassing – and it made me reflect on the increasingly hostile environment of this disunited kingdom.

Even so, the media furore feels disproportionate, given the avalanche of huge stories you might expect to be dominating the news cycle. It’s not that this one isn’t serious. Racism always is, which is why I’ve spoken out. But something about this media frenzy feels … off. Even as I write this, interview requests are coming in faster than I can say no to (in one case my refusal was countered with the offer of a huge fee). If you have seen the emergency appeal that the Women’s Equality party launched this week, you will understand how hard that particular refusal was, though it confirmed why my decision had been right in the first place.

The initial calls I received were from journalists not looking for my account, but my corroboration. It took some time to realise that it was the very fact that the incident had been “witnessed” that made it significant, and forced the palace to respond swiftly (and in my view, unsatisfactorily). Unlike when the Duchess of Sussex made her accounts of royal racism, such as the “concerns” that were expressed over how dark her son’s skin might be, the palace wasn’t able to deny or deflect this time. It couldn’t rerun the famous line that “recollections may vary”, because three of us have identical, and identically uncomfortable, recollections of that encounter.

Soon after the first media reports were published, the palace announced that Hussey had resigned. This is a gambit that I have become increasingly familiar with since the Women’s Equality party started campaigning against police misogyny. What I’ve learned is that the “bad apple” narrative is potent not only because it masquerades as taking responsibility without the institution having to do any such thing, but also because it often helps drive a backlash against the “woke brigade” for cancelling yet another innocent. I see that “She’s 83” is now trending on Twitter, imploring us to leave this nice old lady alone, a stance that adds a dash of ageism to the racism that has pervaded much of the commentary.

The funny thing is, neither Ngozi nor I wanted Hussey to receive the grand order of the boot. Ngozi didn’t even name her publicly; it was social media that did this, immediately seizing on the story as another chance to form into polarised rival camps. Instead of stepping down, Hussey should be encouraged to step up, along with senior members of the royal household. This is much bigger than one individual: blaming Hussey risks minimising and distracting from the depth and breadth of racism that is enshrined in an institution that carries the heritage of empire, slavery and inequality (we are their subjects, after all).

Buckingham Palace trumpets its commitment to diversity and inclusion on its website. In a statement on Wednesday, it promised to remind staff of its policies. That’s a big ask when its own annual reports show a lack of diversity among the upper echelons of its staff. The palace’s history is dotted with failures of inclusion. Still, it’s not the worst of the royal courts. Anecdotal evidence suggests that honour falls to Kensington Palace, which didn’t even release this data in its last annual report.

Perhaps a starting point for an institution where staff think it’s OK to touch a Black woman’s hair or question her belonging would be signing up to cultural competence training. I know just the organisation to provide that. Sistah Space, the charity Ngozi runs to support African and Caribbean heritage women affected by domestic and sexual abuse, offers such courses to institutions that don’t know where to begin.

Wouldn’t it be something if Buckingham Palace asked for their help? It would certainly chime with the Queen Consort’s speech at the reception, in which she said that the starting point for responding to survivors of abuse was listening to them and believing them. Perhaps, one day, that principle could extend to Meghan too.

Mandu Reid is leader of the Women’s Equality party