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.
France’s Constitutional Council this month ruled that the country’s adoption of the European Union Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance (TSCG), which commits governments to strict deficit limits and, by consequence, severe austerity measures, with harsh penalties for those who transgress, requires no reform to the constitution, and therefore no public consultation through a referendum. The fiscal pact, agreed in March and which socialist President François Hollande initially pledged during his election campaign to renegotiate, is now certain to be ratified by the country’s socialist-dominated parliament. Here, Mediapart Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel argues that the move is nothing short of a silent Coup d’Etat imposed by a political elite through flagrant abuse of the democratic process. Europe, he says, desperately needs a thorough debate and public consultation over the policies that are driving nations into a brick wall.
The common future of Europe’s peoples is being played out in Greece - not only the future of our economies, but also that of our democratic institutions, writes Mediapart Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel. He argues here why the Greeks are not responsible for a crisis produced by Europe's blind leaders, who abandoned political vision to serve the interests of the world of finance, and why the crucial parliamentary elections to be held in Greece on June 17th offer an audacious alternative to the prevailing dogma that is sending us all towards catastrophe.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced he is to sue Mediapart over its report of plans by the former Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to fund his presidential election campaign in 2007. Mediapart stands by all the evidence it has revealed, writes Editor-in Chief Edwy Plenel, who explains here why Sarkozy’s reaction, and the accompanying denials of two protected former Gaddafi henchmen, were entirely predictable.
Raymond Aubrac, one of France’s greatest wartime Resistance figures, who died aged 97 on April 10th, was laid to rest earlier this week in a ceremony with military honours at Les Invalides in Paris, where a choir sang the anthem of the Resistance movement, Le Chant des Partisans. His ashes were later buried in Burgundy alongside those of his wife and life-long companion Lucie, a heroine of the Resistance who died in 2007. The brevity of the tribute paid to Aubrac by the French presidential office highlighted the unease that the glorious dead can cause among the far-from-glorious living, writes Mediapart Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel, who pays tribute here to a man who espoused the cause of resistance right up to his death, and whose unfailing combat for equality, social justice and fraternity was fired by unvanquished optimism.
The programme of the national council of the French Resistance movement, established in March 1944, demanded not only the guarantee of freedom of the press but also the respect of “its honour”, namely its “independence regarding the State [and] the power of capital”. The challenge for Mediapart when it was created four years ago, on March 16th 2008, was to put into practice those ideals and to prove their continued relevance today, writes Mediapart Editor-in-Chief, Edwy Plenel. That challenge was met, but the task now is to keep them solidly alive over the long term.
In November 2010, Mediapart exposed how it was the target of a police espionage operation mounted on the orders of the French presidency. President Nicolas Sarkozy’s then-chief-of-staff, Claude Guéant, the current interior minister, responded by suing Mediapart for libel. But Guéant suddenly dropped his lawsuit in June last year, fearful of the disclosures that would emerge during the trial, which had been due in the autumn. A book published this week in France, L’Espion du Président (‘The President’s Spy’), focussing on the actions of French domestic intelligence chief Bernard Squarcini (pictured), contains new revelations about the scope of the surveillance of Mediapart and other French media. Here, in an outline of pertinent extracts, Mediapart Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel explains why Mediapart has decided to take legal action to prompt an independent judicial investigation into the latest shocking disclosures.
French Minister of Health, Labour and Employment, Xavier Bertrand (pictured), is to stand trial for slander after accusing Mediapart of using "fascist methods" in its exposure of the L'Oréal-Bettencourt scandal, when it revealed the dissimulation in secret foreign bank accounts of part of the l'Oréal heiress's fortune, the shady and intimate links between French politicians and the world of business and finance, suspected illegal political party funding and grave ministerial conflicts of interest. Mediapart Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel explains the background and context of what may prove to be a landmark case.
Launched less than four years ago, Mediapart is unique among the media, with no equivalent in terms of either its editorial identity or its business model. This December marked the first year in which it has crossed into profit, with more than 56,000 subscribers. Here, Mediapart co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel sets out why, more than ever, this fully-independent, ad-free online journal needs the support and loyalty of its subscribers to reach an enduring, solid base.
Stéphane Hessel and Edgar Morin (pictured) formed a formidable couple when they launched, here on Mediapart, a joint appeal to candidates in France’s 2012 presidential elections. The pair, then aged 90 and 94 respectively, had lived through similar experiences: Hessel was a German naturalised French, former WWII Resistance fighter, survivor of Nazi concentration camps, while Morin, widely acclaimed as one of Europe's greatest 20th-century thinkers, was born to immigrant parents and also fought in the Resistance movement. In this tribute to Hessel, who died overnight on Tuesday, Mediapart republishes the text and video of their outline for a "path of hope" for a new society that shuns "the futile, the disposable, and the wasteful”, an end to economic policies "driving us to disaster", and for a return to values of social responsibility.
In a series of exclusive reports that began in July, Mediapart has revealed the long-standing close links between France-based businessman and arms dealer Ziad Takieddine and the inner circle of advisers and aides surrounding Nicolas Sarkozy, before and after he became French president. Now a Mediapart journalist has made an official complaint after receiving death threats linked to the stories. Here Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel discloses the nature of the threats and explains why Mediapart has decided to lodge the complaint with the legal authorities.
In July, Mediapart began the publication of a series of investigative articles about the very close and longstanding links between Franco-Lebanese arms dealer Ziad Takieddine and the inner circle of advisors and aides surrounding Nicolas Sarkozy - before and after he became French president. Takieddine is a key witness in an ongoing French judicial probe into suspected illegal party financing through commissions paid in a major French weapons sale, and Mediapart's revelations raise disturbing questions about other deals he was involved in. In a brief interview with Mediapart in July, Takieddine declared: "I'm a clean man and you're dirty. You're one of the filthy who are most productive in the muck." Here, Mediapart Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel sets out the key issues exposed by the investigations, and argues why an unprecedented chain of corruption is strangling France's institutions.
No French authority, and notably no court of law, could allow a selection process among citizens based on their foreign origins, their skin colour or the religion they practice. That is key to understanding the importance of Mediapart's exclusive revelations of how the country's football chiefs hatched secret plans for a discriminatory selection of young players. Mediapart Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel argues here why this sorry affair, the demonstration of an alarming loss of values, offers a wakeup call for French society.
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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.
