by A.P.
On Jan. 29, French Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot announced that she had requested the re-examination of the status of “political and general information” website from which the online medium France Soir benefits.
France Soir was formerly a daily print newspaper that dated back to 1944. In 2013, it shifted to being an online news website only. Being recognized as a “political and general information” website entitles it, as in the case of other online publications of this type, to some tax benefits and subsidies. Such financial support is supposed to promote media pluralism in France and their independence from major advertisers.
But that is the theory because when a newspaper or news site displeases the government, it is stripped of aid under various pretexts. At the same time, the newspapers of the big oligarchs that are closer to the government — the owners of Le Monde, Libération, and Le Figaro, for example — or the communist newspaper L’Humanité benefit from uninterrupted financial support.
It looks like French-style media pluralism works from the center-right to the far left while excluding right-wing media outlets that are conservative, sovereignist, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-health restrictions in the face of Covid-19, and so on. It is as if the only opposition allowed to Macron is that of the far left which in no way threatens his re-election in 2022.