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.
The French Republic is in its death throes, having been taken hostage by a maniac – François Fillon - who is riding roughshod over the legal system, insulting the press, scorning his own elected representatives and calling on divisive factions for help. Having destroyed political parties, corrupted Parliament and having undermined voting itself, the Fifth Republic is now reaching the climax of its democracy-destroying operation. It is time to get rid of it, writes Mediapart's editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel, before it is too late.
Last week the French authorities banned a planned march in Paris by trade unions opposed to labour law reforms, before eventually backing down partially and allowing a more limited demonstration. Here Mediapart's editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel argues that demonstrating is a constitutional right and that, by banning the march that the trade unions wanted, the government violated the fundamental law that guarantees all our freedoms. It is, he writes, our duty to resist this unlawful act in order to defend our common ideal: democracy.
Two French judges have found there are no grounds for challenging the authenticity of an official Libyan document revealed by Mediapart in 2012 and which declares that the Gaddafi regime had agreed to fund Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign to the sum of 50 million euros. The magistrates, in charge of an investigation prompted by a lawsuit launched by Sarkozy against Mediapart for “forgery” and “use of forgery”, have thrown out the case after years of thorough expert appraisals of the document and witness statements. Mediapart’s editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel details the judgment and the background to the case.
Democracy belongs to neither the Left nor the Right, and when it is flouted by governments of either political side every democrat worthy of the name must simply say “no”, argues Mediapart editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel following the socialist government’s decision to force through parliament, without a vote, its controversial labour law reforms which, he writes in this op-ed, represent a social regression for every employee in France.
This month marked the 20th anniversary of the death, on January 8th 1996 at the age of 79, of François Mitterrand, the first socialist president to be elected under France’s Fifth Republic. He served two successive terms in office from 1981 until 1995, during which time current president, François Hollande, and other leading Socialist Party figures received their political schooling. Mediapart editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel takes stock of Mitterrand’s legacy of which, he argues here, the socialists now in power have retained only the dark side.
President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls are forging ahead with plans to strip French nationality from anyone with dual nationality who commits terrorist acts against the country. This is despite strong opposition from many on the Left, including senior figures in the ruling Socialist Party. Here Mediapart's editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel argues that in following this path the socialist government is removing traditional political and historical reference points from its supporters. In particular, he says, the authorities have forgotten the warnings set out in philosopher Hannah Arendt's masterpiece 'The Origins of Totalitarianism'.
The French parliament this week approved a three-month prolongation of the state of emergency introduced in the country immediately after the November 13th terrorist attacks in and around Paris which have left 130 people dead. The debate over the state of emergency powers is about its effectiveness, writes Mediapart editor in chief Edwy Plenel who argues here that the emphasis on security alone is a short-term response driven by an immediate political agenda which hands the perpetrators a symbolic victory, and which disarms French society as much as it protects it.
The terrorist attack in Paris and at the Stade de France on Friday November 13th targeted the whole of society; our society, our France, a France made up of diversity, plurality, of people coming together and mixing, argues Mediapart's editor-in-chief, Edwy Plenel. It is that open society that the terror wants to shut down, to silence through fear, to make disappear through horror. And it is this society, he says, that we must defend because it is our most secure and lasting protection against terrorism.
Mediapart has been notified by the French tax administration that it must pay a total of 4.1 million euros in an adjustment of its VAT payments over a six-year period between 2008 and 2014. The adjustment comes after Mediapart’s long campaign, finally vindicated by a law introduced in 2014, calling for the discriminatory 20% VAT rate for the online press to be removed and aligned to the 2.1% VAT rate applied to the print-based press. Mediapart, which openly applied the lower VAT rate amid years of discussions over the issue with the administration and government, must now meet the demand for the backpayments immediately, despite an appeal procedure. Mediapart editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel explains the background to what appears to be a move of vengeance, and appeals here for your support in face of the severe threat now hanging over this independent online journal.
The French naval frogman who sank the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand in July 1985, causing the death of photographer Fernando Pereira, has spoken publicly for the first time. Jean-Luc Kister, who was ordered to sink the boat that took part in protests against France's nuclear tests in the Pacific, has given a long interview to Mediapart's editor-in-chief, Edwy Plenel, the journalist who broke the story of French involvement in the attack 30 years ago. This interview is published simultaneously with a public apology given by Kister on New Zealand state television.
Last month, just before Mediapart broke the WikiLeaks revelations about US spying on France, a last-minute amendment was discreetly made to the French government’s highly-controversial snooping bill shortly before it was due to become law. The change would have given the country's secret services complete freedom to spy on any individual who was not “French or a person habitually residing in the country”. A French Parliamentary committee accepted the amendment, though the eventual outcry when details of it later emerged forced the government to remove the measure. However, argues Mediapart's editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel, in an article written before the WikiLeaks spying disclosures, the episode shows just how much the French government kowtows to the anti-democratic tendencies of a whole panoply of non-elected technocrats and officials - France's 'state within a state' or 'deep state'.
President François Hollande and his ministers seem determined to press ahead with their intelligence and surveillance bill which will give wide-ranging powers to the security services and police. It is the first time in more than half a century in France that a left-wing administration has been party to such a retreat from democracy. Instead of extending existing freedoms or creating new ones, the current government is following in the tradition of right-wing administrations, extolling the virtues of secrecy, refusing debate, acting in an authoritarian manner and handing greater powers to the hidden world of intelligence and surveillance, without offering any serious checks and counterbalances in return. Ahead of a day of protest on Monday May 4th against the bill, Mediapart's editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel argues that all the time that the nation's highly-personalised presidential system of government remains in place, France will continue to suffer from politics that lack true democracy.
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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.
