Paris (AFP)

Hervé Gattegno was removed from the leadership of Paris-Match and the JDD six months before the presidential elections.

The Lagardère group, owner of these two press titles, has remained silent on the reasons for this departure.

At the service of the group for five years, Mr. Gattegno, 57, is thanked for his "unfailing commitment (...), his professionalism and his energy" by Arnaud Lagardère, CEO of Lagardère, and Constance Benqué, President of Lagardère News, in a press release.

Its release will be effective Friday.

"The new editorial management will be announced in the coming days," wrote the group.

This eviction questions the journalists of Paris-Match (502,040 copies distributed in 2020-21) and the JDD (149,203 copies).

"It is not the best day of my life", admitted Mr. Gattegno, visibly moved, during a conference in front of the editorial staff of Paris-Match Tuesday afternoon, according to a source on the spot.

Questioned, he gave no reason for his departure, having obviously signed a confidentiality clause.

According to a source who wishes to remain anonymous, "relief dominates the drafting" of Paris-Match.

"He was very little liked by journalists who did not appreciate his brutal and authoritarian methods."

For interlocutors of the two newspapers, who all requested anonymity, the number one reason for the eviction of Hervé Gattegno, "it is Zemmour" and the way in which the two editors treated the news of the polemicist of far right, star until recently of the continuous news channel CNews (which belongs to Vivendi, controlled by the Breton billionaire Vincent Bolloré).

In front of Paris-Match journalists, Hervé Gattegno denied that this was the cause of his departure.

The weekly published at the end of September in the front page a photo of Eric Zemmour - who is married - hugging his collaborator Sarah Knafo during a swim in the sea. A few days before, Mr. Gattegno signed an editorial in the JDD, with the unequivocal title : "Eric Zemmour poses more as a prophet of misfortune than a knight of renewal".

The positioning of the editorial director of the JDD and Paris-Match "against the far right has always been clear, he did not intend to treat this current like the others," said a journalist to AFP.

- "Deep discomfort" -

Vivendi, controlled by Bolloré, has been Lagardère's largest shareholder since 2020. In September, the group announced that it wanted to launch a takeover bid on Lagardère to take the total capital.

Since the arrival of Bolloré in Lagardère, many fear that his influence will extend to all the editorial staff of the group.

Thus, at Europe 1, a large part of the editorial staff left the radio in recent weeks.

For other interlocutors interviewed by AFP, "Gattegno is paying for its handling of the Takieddine affair".

In November 2020, Paris-Match published an interview with Ziad Takieddine in which he reconsidered his accusations concerning the money that Nicolas Sarkozy would have received from the Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi.

In the wake of a judicial inquiry had been opened on the conditions of preparation for this interview, resulting in the custody of the journalist of Paris-Match François de Labarre and the indictment of "Mimi" Marchand, the boss of the BestImage agency.

The society of journalists (SDJ) of Paris-Match and journalists' unions mentioned in a text at the end of June the "deep unease" reigning within the editorial staff of the weekly after the legal consequences of the Takieddine affair on their colleague .

A case also damaging for the "credibility" of their title, according to them.

The signatories thus said they were "troubled by the bias of (their) newspaper" in favor of Nicolas Sarkozy.

An uneasiness all the greater since the former President of the Republic joined the Lagardère group's board of directors at the end of June 2021.

© 2021 AFP