Né en 1952, journaliste professionnel depuis 1976. D’abord à Rouge (1976-1978), puis quelques mois au Matin de Paris et, surtout, au Monde pendant vingt-cinq ans (1980-2005).
Cofondateur de Mediapart, j’en ai assuré la présidence et la direction de publication de mars 2008 à mars 2024.
Auteur d’une trentaine d’ouvrages (bibliographie disponible sur Wikipedia en français).
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.
The fabricated claim that the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris was attacked by protestors during the traditional May Day demonstrations was a lie too far by a government that denies the reality of its own unpopularity, writes Mediapart’s publishing editor Edwy Plenel. Its downward authoritarian spiral, he argues, is making it an accomplice in the destruction of democratic ethics.
The fate of Julian Assange, just like that of Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden, represents a far bigger issue than that of him as an individual, writes Mediapart’s publishing editor Edwy Plenel in this opinion article. Whatever Assange’s personal faults or mistakes, he argues, the move for his extradition to the US is about making an example of him to others because he had the audacity to challenge the powers that be with the weapon of the right to know.
Mediapart is taking legal action against the French state for the attempt to search our offices over the so-called Benalla affair involving President Emmanuel Macron's former security aide Alexandre Benalla, writes Mediapart publishing editor Edwy Plenel. We are asking the courts to rule that by ordering this baseless, unfair and disproportionate action, the Paris prosecutor has made the French state liable for breaching the protection given to journalists to keep their sources secret, and for obstructing Mediapart's journalistic work.
Mediapart is not a back-room intelligence agency but a news-gathering organization. We do not spy on anyone nor do we install secret microphones, writes Mediapart publishing editor Edwy Plenel. We are content with revealing information in the public interest while respecting press laws. That is true in the current affair involving President Emmanuel Macron's security aide Alexandre Benalla just as it was in the earlier Bettencourt, Sarkozy-Gaddafi and Cahuzac affairs, he says.
France's highest appeal court, the Cour de Cassation, has rejected an appeal by former president Nicolas Sarkozy in a case against Mediapart relating to the authenticity of a key document showing he was promised Libyan funding for his 2007 election campaign. The judgement, published on Wednesday January 30th, means that the former president can no longer evade the election funding scandal revealed by this site, says Mediapart's publishing editor Edwy Plenel.
On Monday January 7th the French prime minster Édouard Philippe announced plans to boost the array of security powers at the state's disposal with, in particular, a new law against rioters and undeclared demonstrations, plus preventative targeting of protestors presumed to be violent. Mediapart publishing editor Edwy Plenel points out that the prime minister did not utter a word about police violence, demonstrating that in making this repressive decision the government has turned its back on the sometimes vague democratic demands made by the 'yellow vest' protestors.
Seven years after Mediapart's revelations about discriminatory ethnic quotas in French football, our 'Football Leaks 2' investigation revealed how French football's most prestigious club, PSG, kept files on the ethnic origins of potential youth recruits, writes Mediapart publishing editor Edwy Plenel. What, he asks, does this persistent prejudice say about France?
The revolt of the 'gilets jaunes', the protesters whose symbol is their yellow hi-vis jackets, is aimed against tax injustice and arbitrary behaviour by the French state. What drives it is that which lies at the heart of of all emancipatory struggles: the demand for equality. Mediapart publishing editor Edwy Plenel argues that its political future will depend on its willingness to embrace common cause with others movements who are advocating equality for all.
The migrant issue has become a decisive test for all those on the Left who campaign for the emancipation of the people and equal rights for all. Mediapart publishing editor Edwy Plenel argues that far from protecting existing rights, any concession to the politics of rejection, to the favouring of one nationality over others or to policies based on borders and identity, will simply help the cause of the extreme right.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday issued a landmark statement officially recognising for the first time the systematic use of torture by French forces during the 1954-1962 Algerian war of independence. The admission was made alongside a letter presented to the widow of Maurice Audin, a 25-year-old mathematician and militant for Algerian independence who disappeared after his arrest by the French military in 1957, and who Macron acknowledged had died after he was tortured in detention. Mediapart publishing editor Edwy Plenel sets out here why the move is as historically significant as the recognition in 1995 by then president Jacques Chirac of the responsibility of France in the deportation of Jews to German death camps during WWII, and why it may herald a reconciliation of sorts after six decades of denial.
After the resignation of his high-profile and popular environment minister – which exposed the gulf between the presidency and wider society – President Emmanuel Macron made a declaration and a decision which then widened that gap still further. The decision was the nomination of a close friend, the writer Philippe Besson, as France's consul general in Los Angeles. The declaration was his criticism of his own people as “Gauls who are resistant to change”. Mediapart publishing editor Edwy Plenel looks at what these recent episodes say about the state of France's outmoded presidential system.
French environment minister Nicolas Hulot dramatically resigned from government on Tuesday, announcing his surprise decision during a live radio interview. Mediapart publishing editor Edwy Plenel argues here that it represents a salutary electroshock that highlights the impasse of economic policies leading to an ecological catastrophe, and also puts an end to the illusion that the will of a supposedly providential man alone can bring about a sudden turnaround in approach to environmental issues. Hulot’s resignation, he says, resonates as a call for society to mobilise itself in favour of a veritable political alternative.
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“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.
Le cinéaste Marcel Ophüls, décédé le 24 mai à 97 ans, fut un compagnon de route de Mediapart. Un compagnonnage commencé bien avant, en 1994, à l’occasion de son film Veillées d’armes : histoire du journalisme en temps de guerre.
Avec Olivier Martin, dit Olive, mort le 26 avril après quinze ans de lutte contre la maladie, c’est une haute et belle figure de l’engagement antifasciste qui s’en est allée. Le combat vital de toute une génération.
