Hervé Bourges, great friend of Algeria and fervent defender of the Francophonie, has died

He was an unclassifiable character as he wandered between the media, politics and diplomacy. Hervé Bourges died in a Paris hospital on Sunday February 23 at the age of 86, surrounded by his relatives, AFP said.

Journalist, successive boss of the television channels TF1, France 2 and France 3, but also of radio (RFI), Hervé Bourges had been at the head of the CSA from 1995 to 2001. Besides his eminent roles in the media, Hervé Bourges was also an anti-colonialist militant from the time of the Algerian war, a lover of Africa and a fervent defender of the French-speaking world.

"We who admired him, appealed to him, have counted many times on his invaluable assistance, his opinions on the media or on the rule of law, are deeply saddened", reacted in particular on Twitter Michaëlle Jean, who in particular, UNESCO Special Envoy for Haiti (2010-2014) and Secretary General of La Francophonie (2014-2018).

For his part, the former boss of Radio France and the National Audiovisual Institute Mathieu Gallet paid tribute on Twitter to the man "demanding and fair". "Hervé Bourges, it was Algeria, it was Africa, it was the French-speaking world, it was journalism, it was public broadcasting, it was all broadcasting. It was a conscience. I liked his look on the world and on men, "he added.

Hervé Bourges was Algeria, it was Africa, it was the French-speaking world, it was journalism, it was public broadcasting, it was all broadcasting. It was a conscience. I liked his look on the world and on men. Demanding and fair. https://t.co/MgpiPzIidA

Born May 2, 1933 in Rennes, he graduated from the Lille School of Journalism (ESJ) in 1955 and began his career with the newspaper Témoignage Chrétien, which campaigned against the Algerian war. Two years later, he was called up for military service in Algeria, where he was entrusted with organizing the theater for the armies.

On his return to France in 1960, he entered the cabinet of Edmond Michelet, Keeper of the Seals of General de Gaulle and, as such, regularly visited the leaders of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) imprisoned at the Château de Turquant, among them Ahmed Ben Bella. When the latter, after independence, in 1963 became the first president of Algeria, he asked Hervé Bourges to become his adviser.

"Give France an image that is suitable"

After his fall in 1965, Hervé Bourges chose to stay in Algeria as an advisor to the Minister of Information, Bachir Boumaza. A time stopped and even imprisoned in the Algerian jails, he will owe his release only to the combined intervention of Cardinal Duval in Algiers and, in Paris, of the young Jacques Chirac, then adviser to Prime Minister Georges Pompidou.

Accused alternately of treachery by the nostalgics of French Algeria or, on the contrary, of being a barbouze infiltrated by the French, Hervé Bourges will answer much later: "I was neither. I was just someone who was trying to help Algeria and give France a decent image. "

After his eventful departure from Algeria, he rebounded by creating the School of Journalism in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

In 1976, he became director then president of ESJ Lille and successively took over the management of three major French media: RFI (Radio France Internationale), TF1 (until its privatization in April 1987) then Antenne 2 and FR3 until September 1992 when the two public channels became the France Télévisions group. He will not run for his own succession, for lack of support from the new right-wing majority in 1993.

Ambassador of La Francophonie

After two years spent as Ambassador of France to Unesco, in January 1995 he was appointed President of the Superior Audiovisual Council by President François Mitterrand.

Hervé Bourges, certainly marked "on the left", maintains excellent relations "on the right", in particular with Édouard Balladur who offers him an ambassadorial post in Dakar or Jacques Chirac who wants to make him his Minister for Cooperation.

He declined and took care of the French-speaking world: he became president of the International Union of the French-speaking press in 2001.

This fine observer of the political and media world is the author of several works devoted to the Third World ("Les 50 Afriques", in collaboration with journalist Claude Wauthier, 1979) or to his audiovisual experience ("A chain on the arms" 1987, "Public Television" 1993).

Autobiographical works also: "From elephant memory" on Algeria and, in 2016, "I have too little time to live to lose little; Intimate alphabet book". He had signed in 2012 a last documentary "Algeria in the test of power", with the director Jérôme Sesquin.

With AFP

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