San Francisco Frontiers - French right-wing media's Russia tilt irks Elysee 

"The bidding war of fear," said the headline of Journal du Dimanche (JDD), accusing President Emmanuel Macron of seeking to panic France in an address to the nation last week when he described Russia as a "threat" to all of Europe.

The JDD, a venerable title founded in 1948, has taken an increasingly right-wing stance critical of Macron since coming under the ownership of tycoon Vincent Bollore, joining his other right-wing outlets such as Europe 1 radio, rolling news channel C24 and the C8 channel.

By contrast, its Sunday rival La Tribune Dimanche, a centrist weekly, chose to highlight an interview with Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu, a close ally of Macron, whose stern face covered the front page. "Those who deny the Russian threat are wrong," he said.

The contrasting front pages highlight a battle being played out in French media after the accession of Donald Trump to the White House emboldened those who argue Paris should now take a more conciliatory line towards Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The JDD also said Macron was seeking to "scare" France and carried an interview with former defence minister Herve Morin, who accused Macron of "excessively worrying the French" over the risk posed by Russia.

In response, the Elysee took the highly unusual step of issuing a denial that Macron had ever sought to "scare" the French, in a statement on the official social media account of the French presidency

"In this serious period... everyone must ensure that the facts are perfectly accurate," it said. "The moment demands clarity, patriotism and a sense of national unity."

- 'Radio KGB' -

Macron's Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has made clear he has no intention to boycott Bollore's hugely influential media stable at a time when the main domestic political challenge comes from the far right.

Last week he gave an interview to Europe 1, fielding questions from its prominent presenter Laurence Ferrari.

But after Ferrari accused French officials of "wanting to go to war against Russia", a prominent Elysee advisor, asking not to be named, denounced the channel as "radio KGB".

The Le Monde daily accused Bollore's titles of "overtly defending Russia", pointing to Pascal Praud, the star anchor on CNews, who on March 3 stated: "Russia has won the war and we, the Europeans, lost it, along with Ukraine."

"We don't have a portrait of Vladimir Putin in the editorial office. No one openly defends Putin," JDD journalist Jules Torres told Europe 1 on Sunday.

Praud accused Le Monde on Monday of "turning its back on the truth of the facts" and "adopting an editorial line of the extreme left".

"The success of CNews is based on going against the grain," he added.

The influence also extends to publishing books through Bollore's ownership of renowned publisher Fayard, part of the Louis Hachette Group it owns.

This month, the house published the book "Bannie" ("Banned") by Xenia Fedorova, the former director of the French version of Russian state-run foreign language channel RT, which was banned in France after the invasion.

In the book, she portrays herself as a victim of state censorship and, according to the publisher, describes "the manoeuvres that led to the eradication of a dissident voice from the news".

- 'Ideological and editorial' -

France's broadcast regulator Arcom forced Bollore's C8 channel off the air last month citing a string of violations, sparking an outcry among right-wing politicians.

But in his interview with La Tribune, Lecornu warned that "Russians are reinventing war" to operations away from the battlefield such as media and democracy, saying France's 2027 presidential elections "could be the subject of massive manipulations".

Maxime Audinet, a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Research of the Military School (IRSEM), said Bollore's media outlets were among "the only ones who agreed to recruit former RT France employees".

The author of a book on RT France that earned him a defamation suit, Audinet told AFP there was a "collusion that is both ideological and editorial" between these media.

They have "eurosceptic, conservative, reactionary positions on the ideological level" and "an alternative anti-establishment media posture" on the editorial level, he said.

Another critic of the Bollore empire, media historian Alexis Levrier, said the heightened rhetoric at JDD might have caused an outbreak of "awareness" at the Elysee.

"But how naive! This comes after years of ambiguity and mutual seduction," he said.

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S.Hall--SFF