Né en 1952, journaliste professionnel depuis 1976. Après des débuts à Rouge (1976-1978), puis au Matin de Paris (1979-1980) au retour du service militaire, j’ai longtemps travaillé au Monde (1980-2005) dont je fus directeur de la rédaction. Cofondateur de Mediapart en 2008, j’en ai assuré la présidence et la direction de publication de sa création à 2024. Depuis, je continue à y contribuer, notamment avec L’échappée. Je suis l’auteur d’une quarantaine d’ouvrages (bibliographie complète disponible sur Wikipedia en français), dont les suivants concernent directement le journalisme : Le journaliste et le président (2006), Combat pour une presse libre (2009), Le droit de savoir (2013), La troisième équipe (2015), La valeur de l’information (2018), La sauvegarde du peuple (2020). J’ai donné des enseignements aux universités de Montpellier et de Neuchâtel et à l’ENS de Paris.
Declaration of interest
In the interest of transparency towards its readers, Mediapart’s journalists fill out and make public since 2018 a declaration of interests on the model of the one filled out by members of parliament and senior civil servants with the High Authority for Transparency and Public Life (HATVP), a body created in 2014 after Mediapart’s revelations on the Cahuzac affair.
In July 1985, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk in the New Zealand port of Aukland, when one of the NGO’s photographers was drowned, in an operation by France's forein intelligence agency, the DGSE, to prevent Greenpeace from campaigning against French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. Paris vehemently denied involvement, but was eventually forced to admit responsibility for the attack. Mediapart co-founder Edwy Plenel, who at the time worked for French daily Le Monde, whose revelations forced the resignations of the DGSE boss and his defence minister, reports here how the principal culprit, then French president François Mitterrand, got away with his crime.
Israel has claimed responsibility for the assassinations in Gaza on August 10th of a group of Gazan journalists working for the TV channel Al Jazeera, and alleged that one of them, reporter Anas al-Sharif, was "the head of a Hamas terrorist cell". The Israeli military have carried out an unprecedented number of executions of Palestinian journalists, writes Mediapart co-founder Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article. He argues that the slaughter of local reporters in Gaza, to where no international media can gain access, is in order to eliminate the evidence of the crimes being committed there.
“It is shameful,” said Emmanuel Macron last week, commenting on Israel’s actions against the civilian population in Gaza, where children are increasingly affected by malnutrition, where famine looms and hospitals have collapsed, and where diseases are spreading. But, writes Mediapart co-founder and former publishing editor Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article, it is also shameful to do nothing concrete to bring an end to this ongoing genocide, and which the French president refuses to recognise as such. Meanwhile, the Hamas-controlled health ministry reported on Saturday that more than 300 people had died in Israeli strikes on Gaza since Wednesday.
After Palestine, Ukraine has become the second victim of a pact of oligarchs established between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, writes Mediapart co-founder Edwy Plenel, who argues that by promoting and imposing a law of the strongest versus the principle of an equality of rights, their alliance amounts, at a global level, to the domination of a Mafia-like capitalism.
Israel does not intend to bring the war in Gaza and Lebanon to a halt with its military successes against Hamas and the Hezbollah, writes Mediapart co-founder and former publishing editor Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article. Israel’s war aim, beyond the riposte to the October 7th 2023 Hamas attacks, is to bring an end to the project for a Palestinian state, and its supporters, he argues, and everything must be done to halt this unending war.
With just days to go before the first round of voting in France's Parliamentary elections, there is a real danger that Rassemblement National could form the next French government. Victory for the far right would not simply lead to a worsening of the conservative policies that are already being pursued in France, writes Mediapart co-founder Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article. It would mark an historic break with the past, he argues, by handing the far right their revenge over opponents who support equality and the universality of human rights.
Having called a snap election, the French president quickly nailed his colours to the mast. The far-right Rassemblement National is preferable to the leftwing New Popular Front: that is the underlying message of Emmanuel Macron's slanderous attack - supported by his allies - against the union of the Left and the greens, an alliance that has been dubbed shameless and been accused of anti-Semitism. But in his criticism of this new front the French head of state is displaying both an ignorance of history and duplicity, writes Mediapart co-founder Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article.
Speaking on France's LCI news channel last week, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu waved the banner of defending 'Judaeo-Christian civilisation' as he sought to justify his crusade against the Palestinian people. In this analysis, Mediapart co-founder Edwy Plenel deconstructs an historical falsehood that ignores the long history of Christian anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is witnessing a resurgence in France at the moment, and is even being stirred up from abroad. In this op-ed article Mediapart co-founder Edwy Plenel argues that neither the fact that it is being exploited to help Israel's cause, nor the fact that there are also other racisms that need combatting, can justify underestimating the dangers involved in this rise of anti-Jewish sentiment.
Showing solidarity with Palestine has been made into an offence in France, writes Mediapart co-founder Edwy Plenel. To express it in speech, in writing or by demonstrating is liable to lead to a police summons, a criminal sentence or, beforehand, a ban. Every democrat should be concerned about this situation.
Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu have the same objective in war, namely the end of international law and the advent of a world where no other law exists except that of force, writes Mediapart co-founder Edwy Plenel in this op-ed article. From that perspective, he argues, to support Israel’s war in Gaza is to offer the Kremlin its victory in Europe.
After playing an active role in the Mediapart adventure since its creation 16 years ago, Carine Fouteau, who was joint editor from 2018 to 2023, has been elected, on my proposal, as its new president and publishing editor, writes Edwy Plenel.
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Un año después de su publicación en Francia, mi mensaje para Europa, «Le jardin et la jungle» (El jardín y la jungla), aparece en español en la editorial Edhasa, dentro de una colección de nuestro socio infoLibre. Con un prólogo de su fundador, Jesús Maraña, que publico aquí con mi más sincero agradecimiento.
Invité pour le livre « Palestine, notre blessure » au Festival international de géographie (FIG) de Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, j’y ai appris qu’un juge des référés avait invoqué ma présence pour justifier un arrêté préfectoral instaurant un périmètre de sécurité policière.
“How the West Sees the World”: I examine this question in “The Garden and the Jungle”, which is published this week in the United States by Other Press, one year after its original publication in French. Here I present my introduction to this American edition, written at the beginning of Trump’s second term, in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza.
À quoi sert l’archéologie ? Pourquoi dérange-t-elle nos politiques au point que l’actuelle ministre de la Culture s’en est prise aux chantiers d’archéologie préventive ? Réponse dans trois émissions de « L’Échappée » dont les invités sont des historiens incarnant cette discipline qui oblige à regarder notre passé, et donc la France, en face, sans mythes ni fadaises.
L’association unitaire Visa (Vigilance et initiatives syndicales antifascistes) publie chez Syllepse un remarquable manuel internationaliste de résistance aux nouveaux fascismes que j’ai volontiers accepté de préfacer.
