May 10, 2003
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Le Monde at war (Financial Times, 5/10/2003)France's newspaper of reference ... has been shaken by the publication of La face cachee du Monde (The Hidden Face of Le Monde), a 630-page "investigation into an institution above all suspicion". The book has raised profound questions about the power the newspaper wields in France, and about the ethics and methods of those at its helm....
The Hidden Face accuses Le Monde of everything from trafficking influence, running secret campaigns for favoured politicians and harassing businessmen for commercial gain to publishing anti-French propaganda, stifling internal debate and misrepresenting the group's sales figures and financial results. It has touched a nerve in France, unleashing pent-up resentment that has stunned the Parisian journalistic elite. Now on its seventh print-run since its publication in February, with more than 350,000 copies of the brick-like tome dispatched to bookshops, it is the publishing sensation of the year....
"Everyone is talking about this book because it is signed Pierre Pean," explains Pierre-Louis Rozynes, editor of literary magazine Livres Hebdo. "He is the king of investigative journalists in France."...
The book describes Plenel's arrival at Le Monde in 1980 as the start of "the most successful operation of 'entryism' in the history of French Trotskyism". He barely had time to discard his codename, Krasny ("Red" in Russian)....
Daniel Carton ... describes how he grew sick of the deceit practised by politicians and the press at the expense of the public. Journalists would accept tax breaks, trips, tickets to the opera. Allegations of bribery and embezzlement were not investigated for fear of offending politicians - or their friends, the editors.
Historians will credit the Internet as the trigger of a media revolution. By reducing the cost of information, the Internet has not only created competition for established media outlets, it has also created an informed audience that suspects the corruption of established media and is receptive to books like The Hidden Face of Le Monde. It is less costly and more rewarding than ever before to expose a 'newspaper of record.'
Monsieur Pean, have you considered a book on the New York Times, s'il vous plait?