Le Monde: Anatomy of a newspaperFrench Cultural Studies, 5 (1994), 57-71.

JOHN FLETCHER 

Not long ago, during one of its periodic crises, Le Mondewas referred to as ‘France’s top newspaper’ on a popularBritish radio news programme, The World Tonight (R4,5.12.90). There are other serious national newspapers inFrance, of course, most notably Liberation on the left andthe venerable Le Figaro on the right, but they cannot viewith Le Monde for the number one position. For almost 50years it has been the newspaper of record in France, andalthough its daily print run, at around the half-millionmark, is not particularly large by internationalstandards, each issue is read by over 800,000 cadres; ofthese 100,000 are subscribers and receive the paperregularly with the mail. Research by IPSOS and figurespublished by the Office de Justification de la Diffusionconfirm anecdotal evidence that Le Monde is the newspaperwith France’s decision-makers and opinion-formers aremost likely to read. For example, in my own field, Inotice that colleagues of maitre de conferences rank and abovetend to be subscribers. In the church, Cardinal Lustigeradmits proudly to having been a regular reader ever sincehe was a parish priest (29.3.91: 12: 6). And a photographof Samuel Beckett taken in the 1960s, shows him relaxingat home, engrossed in a copy of the paper.

As for the future cadres, I am assured by grandes écolescandidates that Le Monde is the only newspaper they feelis indispensable to read. It is significant, too, that 14per cent of all copies printed are exported. Some ofthese must be read by expatriates, but the bulk arepurchased by Francophone opinion-formers abroad, for whomLe Monde is the voice of France par excellence.

Just as the elite read Le Monde, Le Monde gathers in theelite. Philippe Sollers, one time Maoist rebel, nowwrites regularly for the Friday books supplement, for

instance: a particularly brilliant piece of his –suggestive, sympathetic – was devoted to recent books onand by Beckett (9.10.92: 25: 1-5). Like the rest of theFrench establishment which it serves, it is un monderestraint: for example, Cardinal Lustiger, a long-timereader (as we have seen), has himself had an in-deptharticle devoted to him (29.3.91: 1,12). Like theestablishment, too, it is remarkably stable andconsistent, not only in format and style, which havehardly changed over the years, but even more in tone andapproach, which are still those of its founder HubertBeuve-Méry (see my essay review ‘Beuve-Méry and Le Monde’,FCS, ii [1991], 309-313). The taciturn, deeply seriousBeuve was part of the Mounier circle associated with thereview Esprit. The publishing house Le Seuil, the weeklyL’Express and the evening paper Le Monde were all founded inthe wake of the Liberation by people who were friends andwho, as members of Mounier’s entourage, were stronglyinfluenced by his brand of social catholicism.

The serious – even austere – tone imposed by Beuve-Méryon the paper he founded accounts for a number ofcharacteristic features maintained to this day. One isthe prominence given to foreign affairs and world news. LeMonde has always maintained its own extensive network offoreign correspondents, preferring where necessary toeconomize on everything else rather than increase itsreliance on press agencies for overseas newsgathering.Another is staunch independence, reflected in thisreluctance to trust others to supply it with the news,but going much further. The paper’s statutes, forinstance, make it impossible for it to be bought by arich proprietor. Not only the title, but the editorialoffices (now in the rue Falguière; formerly, before thebuilding was sold, in the rue des Italiens) and theprinting works (at Ivry-sur-Seine) are owned by SARL LeMonde, a consortium made up of trustee shareholders (theAssociation Hubert-Beuve-Méry) of journalists, and ofreaders, no one group among which holds a controllinginterest.

Erecting such an impregnable barrier against potentialtakeover bids was Beuve’s idea. He had worked for thepre-war sheets, notably as Prague correspondent for LeTemps; the latter had failed to close down in time underthe Occupation and so was not permitted to reappear afterthe Liberation. Beuve modelled Le Monde closely on LeTemps, however, even down to imitating its gothic-scriptmasthead and front page layout (in any case, several ofits journalists – those who had not been compromised bycollaboration – were recruited by the new paper, whichwas also allowed to requisition the rue des Italiensbuilding where Le Temps had been edited and printed). But,much as he respected his former employer, Beuve wasdetermined that his own newspaper should not beinfluenced by the puissances de l’argent as pre-war titles hadbeen. The only sure way of resisting political andeconomic pressure, Beuve knew, was for the paper’swriters and readers to own the title and its plant.

In Britain we do not find such an idea strange. True, ournewspapers are usually owned by proprietors, but we areperfectly familiar with the Oxbridge formula whereby acollege, its buildings, land and property, are owned by acharity administered with a high degree of independenceand protection from outside interference by the master ormistress and the fellows. Although Beuve would not havebeen aware of the parallel – he was too much of acontinental European in outlook to have any appreciableinterest in or familiarity with the English-speakingworld – the way Le Monde was set up invites comparisonwith our ancient educational foundations. Such ways ofsafeguarding title and tenure are alien to the traditionsof France, where what is not owned by the state isinvariably private property, subject to explicit legaldefinition in all matters relating to sale or bequest. LeMonde’s rather novel formula works, however: the paperhas seen off one or two takeover bids, and is now assecure as any commercial enterprise can be in the presentrecession. According to the 1992 accounts (12.8.93: 14),it seems to be weathering the current economic stormreasonably well, although there were strikes by employeesin the spring of 1991 in protest against an austerity

plan involving redundancies (29.3.91: 27: 1-2). This ledto the loss of some editions, but since then anydistribution difficulties have mostly been caused by adispute between the print union (the Syndicat du LivreCGT) and a maverick proprietor who sought to imitateRupert Murdoch’s successful coup over Wapping, a conflictin which Le Monde was a helpless bystander (28.8.92: 1,20).

The paper’s high-minded seriousness, stamped indeliblyupon it by the founder, inclines it to report not just‘all the news that’s fit to print’ but some items, too,which the squeamish may jib at. Under the rubric‘Société’ – the bland neutrality of which can bedeceptive – the paper does not recoil from reportingmajor trials; nor does it shirk from giving full accountsof the most gruesome testimony. There was a particularlynasty crime involving triple rape and quadruple murderwhich came to trial in Toulouse during the third week ofApril 1991, and the reader was not spared the grislydetails. This was done without prurience, however, andcertainly with none of the ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’which characterizes the way British popular papers coversuch crimes. In fact, Le Monde’s restrained, unemotionalbut exact reporting of the rapes and murders in Toulousebrought out the full horror of the case in a way whichthe hypocritical expression of outrage of our tabloidsrarely manages to do. This is because ‘tout journalistedu Monde porte en lui une vocation contrariée depédagogue’ (Rachid Mimouni, 31.8.90: 16), in the image ofthe founder, again: Beuve-Méry was a former professeur, andthe paper has never lost the rather bookish tone which itacquired under his direction. As Martin Kettle wittilyobserved, it is a waste of time looking in Le Monde forthe cricket scores (Guardian, 17.4.93: 21: 7), though itis only fair to add that the coverage of sports ofgreater interest to the readership is quite good. So wellestablished is the stereotyped image of earnestunfrivolity, however, that Louis Malle could create, inhis film Milou en mai (1989), a character who is introducedas the London correspondent of Le Monde and who, thoughcut off in the country by strikes, is so dedicated to

keeping abreast of the May events in Paris that heinsists on listening to every radio bulletin and so failsto notice that his wife is being seduced under his verynose. This may be a caricature, but it would not havebeen an effective one if it had not contained a grain oftruth.

Again, just like an Oxbridge college, Le Monde tends overtime to recruit and to retain the same sort of people. Inthe early years, in particular, it paid only the minimumunion rate, but very few journalists left the paper forhigher salaries elsewhere. Indeed, the same personneltends to write on the same subjects, so that they acquireconsiderable expertise. For example La Reynière (apseudonym) has, for as long as I can remember, held forthon restaurants and cookery in a tiresome punning mannercuriously at odds with the tone of the rest of the paper(somewhat like an emeritus fellow who cannot be excludedfrom high table although he bores everyone nightly);Laurent Greilsamer (Beuve’s biographer, incidentally) hasbecome the leading reporter on judicial and criminalaffairs; Nicole Zand is the long-serving specialist onforeign literature in translation; and previous directorssuch as André Laurens (1982-1985) and André Fontaine(1985-1991) continue regularly to write for the paper.Moreover, Fontaine also remained in charge of theadvertising division, Le Monde Publicité SA, for severalmonths after he vacated the director’s chair in favour ofJacques Lesourne, professor of economics and present‘master’ of this unique and extraordinary ‘college’. Asin a college, of course, such a degree of continuity canoccasionally lead to complacency, rigidity, and even arather spurious show of unity, as in the very ‘collegial’closing of ranks when the entire staff of ‘Le Monde desLivres’ publicly declared its solidarity with itsdirector, Josyane Savigneau, who was being libelled inL’Idiot international by Jean-Edern Hallier (4.6.93: 19: 6). Infinding such unanimity a trifle suspect, one is not beingcynical, simply a realistic observer of the normallybitchy French cultural scene. On the whole, however, LeMonde’s continuity is a positive thing. In particular, itmeans that readers are not subjected to frenetic changes

in editorial line and presentational style, as hadhappened recently with both The Times and the Guardian.

This is in large part because British newspapers havebecome commercial products which are merchandised likeany other commodity. On ‘Start the Week’ (R4, 12.10.92)the editor of The Times was candid about it. The paper hadbeen redesigned, he said, because people have littleleisure to read these days. There was going to be muchgreater use of colour, he explained; indeed, it soundedalmost as if items were to be colour-coded in future.What is fallacious about this argument is that peoplewill make time to read a newspaper if they need theinformation or the comment; in other words, if the timethat this takes up is time well spent. There is thus avicious circle: if the paper’s content is thin andinsubstantial, intelligent readers will spend less andless time on it, and no amount of colour printing willinduce them to do otherwise. While not spurning thepresentational improvements made possible by newtechnology, Le Monde does not make that mistake. Beuve-Méry used to say that it took two to three hours to readthe paper in its entirety; since his day supplements ofall kinds have proliferated, and it would take aconscientious reader much longer. But of course nobodyreads everything. What people do choose to read, however,is well-researched, authoritative, and dealt with atsufficient length to satisfy all but the most demandingspecialist. One expects no less from a newspaper ofreference and record. Unfortunately, The Times abdicatedthat role long ago, and no other British broadsheet hassucceeded in filling the gap.

It is now clear that Beuve-Méry’s greatest legacy was anewspaper which was able to reconcile two oftenconflicting pressures: to remain true to itself andensure continuity and stability, on the one hand, and onthe other to foster a capacity to change and adapt. Anexample of the former is Jacques Lesourne’s editorial onthe eve of the Maastricht referendum (19.9.92: 1, 5).Measuring his words, he said that the newspaper wouldconsider a ‘no’ vote as momentous for the future of

Europe’s as Hitler’s accession to power in 1933 had been.The tone, the manner, and the prominence given to theeditorial in the paper, together with the fact that itwas widely quoted in other media in France, were allreminiscent of the famous articles in which ‘Sirius’ (theeditorial pseudonym of Hubert Beuve-Méry) was wont topronounce gravely but with measured economy of words onthe great issues of the day. Perhaps the most influentialof all of Beuve’s leaders was the one which is creditedwith having put a stop to the 1968 ‘May Events’; headed‘Oui ou Non’, it consists of five short paragraphs, andruns to less than four hundred words (12.6.68: 1: 2-3).Since in the Maastricht referendum the ‘yes’ vote won bya whisker, and since the urban, educated elite wasdisproportionately represented in the percentage votingin favour, it may well come to be seen, in retrospect,that Lesourne’s forthright editorial swung a crucial fewthousand votes, and in so doing proved decisive.

If this leader was the shape of familiar things pastcontinuing into the present, an example of the way thenewspaper is able to adapt to things to come is thedevelopment of the supplements which I mentioned earlier.Beuve-Méry’s austere puritanism caused him to haveserious doubts about this tendency, although even he hadsanctioned such additions as the book pages includedevery Friday (‘Le Monde des Livres’) and such separatelypublished supplements as the French stamp-collector’sbible, ‘Le Monde des Philatélistes’. Since he stood downLe Monde has grown into a major publishing empire. Thereis now a whole gamut of associated publications rangingon the one hand from the long-running monthly ‘Le Mondediplomatique’ and the overseas weekly ‘Le Monde Sélectionhebdomadaire (Édition internationale)’ which comes in thesame (basically A3) format as the daily paper, to all-colour A4 magazines like ‘Le Monde de l’Éducation’ and‘Le Monde de la Musique’ (which even has its own larger-format supplement, ‘Jazzman’), on the other. On 10October 1992 yet another monthly was launched, ‘Le Mondedes Débats’, in which leading commentators are given aplatform to express their opinions freely. This the paperhas made possible for some time, especially in its

‘Tribune Libre’ rubric on page two, or ‘Point de Vue’articles elsewhere in the paper (such as Erik Orsenna’sdefence of the newly-friendless Jacques Attali, 12.8.93:8, 1-3). It is characteristic that an idea that is triedout in the daily is then set up on its own; no doubt itis only a matter of time before ‘Le Monde des Livres’becomes like the TLS, a separate publication.

In addition to these periodicals, the paper publishesbooks under the imprint ‘Le Monde-Éditions’ – there arenow several titles in the bookshops – and co-sponsorssuch academic encounters as the ‘Séminaire Sciences Po-LeMonde’ – five have been held so far – and such events asthe young writers’ competition ‘Plume en herbe’. It isalso branching out into multimedia products which marketits own texts, especially on CD-ROM (2.2.93: 19 5-6). Onehopes that the paper is not overreaching itself; in thecurrent economic climate the tendency is to retrenchmentand to withdrawal from peripheral activities rather thanthe acquisition of ever more extensive assets, so Le Mondeis swimming against the tide. That even this organizationcannot ignore economic realities was however shown by thedecision (taken in conjunction with other members ofEuropean News Associated Ltd, a consortium which includesThe Independent) to postpone the launch of a new Frenchmorning title (2.7.93: 24: 3-4), and by the sensibleconclusion that Le Monde illustré, a colour supplement, shouldnot be allowed to proceed beyond the dummy issue stage(3.2.93: 27: 1-3). Beuve-Méry’s ghost must be hauntingthe square in Ivry which bears his name, muttering darkwarnings against what is now fashionably referred to as‘overstretch’.

If so, I hope the ghost is being over-cautious; in lifeBeuve ran a tight ship financially, even to the extent ofbeing accused of meanness: his scrutiny ofcorrespondents’ expenses claims became legendary for itsclose attention to detail. But if things have loosened upsomewhat on that front, in other ways, as I have said,the paper he founded remains faithful to the traditionshe established. Chief among these is the way theeditorial stance is unapologetically reflected in the

reporting. Although Le Monde has always been fiercelyindependent in party political terms, it makes no attemptto conceal its sympathies (broadly to the left of centre)nor, even less, its antipathies (the extreme right beingits particular bête noire). Insofar as it has ever beenclose to a particular party, the MRP was that party; andinsofar as it has felt able to endorse an individualpolitician, that politician was Pierre Mendès-France. Itwas profoundly ambivalent in its attitude to General deGaulle, especially after his return to power in 1958. Itshared to some extent the general’s deep suspicion of the‘Anglo-Americans’ – the paper has become noticeably lessanti-American in recent years – but it was always morepro-European than, at heart, he ever really was. It foundhis nationalistic gestures, culminating in the notorious‘Vive le Québec libre!’, not merely distasteful but,worse, profoundly misguided. So Lesourne’s wholeheartedendorsement of the pro-Maastricht campaign came as nosurprise, any more than his uncompromising rejection ofthe Moscow coup in an editorial that Beuve could havesigned, entitled simply ‘S’opposer’ (21.8.91: 1, 7).Similarly, in its news pages, staff writers are notdiscouraged from ironizing about the Front National (seefor example Olivier Biffaud’s article on M. Le Pen’sequivocations over Iraq, 14.9.90: 5: 3-6) or about thetendency among politicians of all persuasions for the potto call the kettle black (see for instance ‘Le syndromedes diamants’ by one of the rédacteurs en chef, Jean-MarieColombani, 23.4.91: 1: 13). Even minor articles can beironical: Olivier Biffaud, again, wondered with more thana touch of sarcasm whether the Republic could really bein such peril from the threat of counter-revolution as tojustify the Minister of the Interior in first banning thetraditional procession of royalists in honour of Joan ofArc and then in ordering the police to disperse theillegal march with some brutality (14.5.91: 40: 3-4).

The same Olivier Biffaud deployed irony at greater lengthin an article on the nonsuit decision handed down by thejudges in the case of Paul Touvier, the former head ofintelligence in the Lyon malice during the last war. Theverdict, Biffaud pointed out, was a ‘gift’ to the extreme

right, whose newspapers duly hailed it as proof that‘honour is not dead in France’. In this article Biffaudhas great fun letting the right-wing press condemn itselfout of its own mouth by stringing together tellingquotations interspersed with his own brief, laconiccommentary, mentioning in passing, for instance, that oneof the Lepenist ‘plumes’ prides himself on having been amember of the Vichy malice (23.4.92: 8: 1-4). Le Monde isnever neutral where the friends and associates of M. LePen are concerned.

When fully roused, however, Le Monde eschews dry humour ofthis kind and adopts a tone of barely contained outrage:a good example is the closing paragraph of the bulletin(that is, the commentary which takes up the far left-handcolumn on the front page) devoted to the ‘fiasco’ ofPresident Yeltsin’s visit to the European Parliament afew months before he became a hero by climbing on to atank in front of the White House in Moscow. The papercould hardly find terms withering enough to express itsdisapproval of the way Parliament treated its visitor:

Par leur paternalisme et leur suffisance, nombre deparlementaires de Strasbourg – on ne peut faire le mêmereproche à M. Giscard d’Estaing, dont le comportement a

été plus digne – ont gâché une belle occasion de tenir lerang auquel ils aspirent. (18.4.91: 1: 1)

Another example of the paper’s refreshing habit of plainspeaking was the bulletin devoted to ‘Operation Irma’. Theeditorialist exposed the humbug of the western allies who– after months of foot-dragging – suddenly, once themedia ‘show’ had brought the case of ‘little Irma’ to theattention of television viewers everywhere, found thatthey had no shortage of hospital beds for badly-woundedBosnian children (17.8.93: 1:1).

The paper’s well-developed sense that it is engaged in amission of high moral seriousness can make it pugnacious,and this in turn can result in it being dragged intolitigation. The Sarroca affair, for instance, led toMichel Noir, the Mayor of Lyon, suing the paper forlibel, an action he lost (10.4.91: 12: 1-3; 18.4.91: 34:

4-6). On the other hand, in the Port Fréjus affair, LeMonde was successfully sued by François Léotard eventhough it had taken refuge behind ‘une formeinterrogative et conditionnelle’ (21.12.90: 13 5-6). Acase of the biter bit? Certainly the fact that thepaper’s mandarin style, of which the conditional tenseand the rhetorical question are hallmarks, proved noprotection in law, was something that did not lackpiquancy. And, occasionally, one feels that Le Monde isbeing unfair. The hounding of Jacques Corrèze, aprominent figure in the Oréal cosmetics group, foralleged membership of the Cagoule secret society beforethe war, for alleged acts of collaboration during it, andfor alleged anti-Semitism after it, leaves a nasty tastein the mouth, especially as he died of cancer when thehue and cry was at its height (6.6.91: 12: 2-6; 28.6.91:26: 2-4).

Equally unfair was the ‘high horse’ moral judgementpassed on the NHS in the case of the British smoker,allegedly ‘interdit d’hôpital’, whose funeral took place,the writer smugly noted, the day he was due to see thespecialist. The article failed to mention that waitinglists for hospital appointments are much longer inBritain than in France and that, unlike the Sécurité Sociale,the NHS, rightly or wrongly, attempts to avoid chronicdeficit by rationing health care, which sometimes meanswithholding or delaying expensive treatment from peoplelike smokers who have little chance of benefiting fromit. An article more in the tradition of Le Monde wouldhave pointed out the different philosophies of the twohealth systems and not used emotive language like ‘uneinadmissible forme de chantage qui peut prendre unedimension criminelle’ to describe the advice given to MrElphick to give up smoking so that bypass surgery couldhave some chance of prolonging his life (19.8.93: 1, 8).

Indeed, is it merely because one is British that oneoccasionally feels that the standard of reporting fromLondon is not always up to the high professionalstandards maintained in the rest of the paper? The thencorrespondent Dominique Dhombres, for instance, succumbed

to la facilité in a report on the 1990 Conservative Partyconference in Bournemouth. This perfunctory and shallowpiece of writing was reminiscent (almost) of the ghastly‘les sujets de sa gracieuse majesté’ kind of reportingfrom Britain all too common in less distinguished Frenchnewspapers. Mrs Thatcher was only weeks away from beingousted from the Tory leadership, but Dhombres does notmention either the poll tax or her attitude to Europe,which taken together were to be the cause of herdownfall. We hear instead about Mrs Thatcher’schampioning of ‘Victorian values’ such as the family,religion and thrift, and the piece ends with the glibremark that although the British vote for the Iron Lady,they betray their indifference to her preaching by savingless and less, divorcing more and more, and going lessand less frequently to church. These generalizationswould need to be nuanced – something the paper usuallydoes, scrupulously – but since they are not, the articleis quite inadequate as a report on a conference that wasto be Thatcher’s last as prime minister (10.10.90: 11: 3-6).

On the other hand, one is not ungrateful when the paperavoids banalities of this kind and calls a spade a spade.Its book reviews, for instance, are usually rather bland,as if it felt that dog must not eat dog. But, every sooften, a book is patently so bad that even Le Monde feelscompelled to say so. Josyane Savigneau, for instance, didnot beat about the bush when she reviewed the Pléiadevolume of Marguerite Yourcenar’s collected essays: ‘unePléiade bien inutile’ was her damning verdict (20.9.91:20: 5-6). If in other reviews the paper tends to pull itspunches, this does not, paradoxically, greatly reduce thevalue of the Friday book pages, because they conveyinvaluable factual information about new Frenchpublications in all fields of the humanities and socialsciences, together with such news items as the winners ofbook prizes and announcements of symposia and lectures bywriters. Another valuable feature of this literarysupplement is the regular publication of background orsurvey articles on authors and literary movements: theseare usually accompanied by footnotes pointing out related

aspects and by detailed, accurate bibliographies whichwould not disgrace an academic paper addressed tospecialists.

When the book pages were launched in 1967, the paperstill carried no photographs except in advertisements.This notorious, characteristically austere feature of LeMonde is explained in part by the founder’s puritanism –a serious paper in his view was made up of good writingwhich had no need of supporting pictures – and in part bythe need for economy: staff photographers did not comecheap, and picture agencies charged fees which the paperpreferred to spend on well-researched print features. Butonce he was gone – though, even then, not until the mid-eighties – a service iconographique was set up. Beuve’s legacysurvives, however, in the refusal to use photographs inthe news pages, where they would ill space to no goodpurpose. Thus the silly habit other papers have ofinserting (for instance) a passport-size snapshot of M.Mitterrand whenever and wherever the name of the Frenchpresident crops up, is something Le Monde never goes infor. Photographs (still largely black and white) are usedin the arts, travel and books pages. In the culturesections these can be surprisingly erotic, as if to nailthe myth that Le Monde is sexless (see for instance theexquisite, disturbing image of a reclining nude on page21 of the issue for 27 June 1991).

The paper still uses pen and ink drawings to good effect(especially sketches of leading public figures or, in thebook pages, of featured authors), but the most strikingnon-photographic illustrations are the cartoons. Thecartoonists are personalities in their own right. Plantuis deceptively bon enfant; a typical drawing of his showsPresident Mitterrand as a rap fan, dancing to hip-hopblaring from a ghetto blaster held to his ear, wearing abaseball cap with its peak turned backwards, and sneakerson his feet. The political point being made here is thatMitterrand manages to remain vachement branché (the slangverbal equivalent of the graphic design) while haplessprime ministers come and go, especially Mme Cresson, whomPlantu, in a characteristic design, made appear rather

more pretty, feminine and petite, with dimpled cheeks,large earrings and bouffant hair, than perhaps she is inthe flesh. Plantu’s gentle handling of politicians, whoare all, men as well as women, made to look rathercuddly, is matched by his understated depiction of humancruelty. The Bosnian crisis, for instance, has allowedhim to draw plump, motherly women in headscarves lookingbewildered and helpless in the midst of carnage anddestruction. His captions are as gently whimsical as hischaracters are loveable, innocent and charming. Hissatire is all the more effective for not being angry andfor adopting witty, unemphatic, understated forms ofexpression. Some years ago, for instance, when the SouthAfrican police had been torturing detainees and Francehad imposed sanctions, a Plantu cartoon revealed a much-bloodied man hanging by his wrists in a cell while hisguards were shown watching the news and complaining thatit was all a damned nuisance: they would now have to giveup eating camembert.

Plantu is always good for a dig at racism; a particularlyclever cartoon shows the black footballer Basile Boliholding up the European Cup which his team Marseille havejust won. A policeman in a peaked cap challenges him ‘Oùt’as piqué ça? Tes papiers!’ Meanwhile the InteriorMinister, Charles Pasqua, also shown en tenue, taps hiscolleague on the shoulder and says ‘Laisse tomber! Jevais t’expliquer!’ In this brilliant raccourci Plantu linksa French sporting success with the new government’spolicy on wider police powers to conduct identity checkson suspected illegal immigrants (28.5.93: 1: 2-3). On adifferent theme – the state funeral in Brussels – Plantuused new colour technology discreetly and effectively.His otherwise black-and-white drawing shows Flemings andWalloons entering separately but emerging arm-in-arm,tearfully, from the royal lying-in-state, with theirtroubled country’s black, yellow and red tricolourfloating high above their heads (7.8.93: 1: 3-4).

His fellow-cartoonist Pancho is not kindly and gentle; onthe contrary, he is altogether harsher and steelier. Hedepicts famous politicians as dumpy, pompous figures in

suits. A particularly telling drawing of his shows thelast premier of the German Democratic Republic holding aglass of champagne but dwarfed by, and excluded from, thebesuited circle of world leaders who are clinkingchummily and ignoring him: the brilliant touch is thattheir heads are not seen, as if de Mazière’s were achild’s eye view of a gathering of adults too wrapped upin their own affairs to pay him any attention (14.9.90:6: 3-5). Pancho is a fine draughtsman, and his people areremarkably lifelike, though in common with allcaricaturists he exaggerates each individual’s leastattractive feature, such as Gorbachev’s port-wine stainbirthmark or the former Japanese premier’s bunny teeth.

Three other cartoonists tend not to engage in politicalsatire but to draw for other pages. Serguei specializesin simple, angular designs to comment on a wide varietyof topics; for instance, to illustrate an article on thesocial and political attitudes of nuns he shows a bonnesœur watching M. Mitterrand on television and beinginterrupted by a broad shaft of light shining on herthrough the gothic window; this leads her to point to thescreen and whisper ‘Chut!’ at the importunate deity(5.4.91: 9: 2-3). Pessin for his part uses strong,minimalist lines to illustrate (mostly, though notexclusively) the financial pages, depicting round-shouldered, rather shabby people attempting to grapplewith daunting problems; and Cagnat employs a scratchypen, ink wash and watercolour in wild, rather surrealistdesigns  that are not greatly dissimilar from those ofour own Ralph Steadman or Gerald Scarfe. The five regularcartoonists make an impressive team which gives the lieto a still widespread notion that today’s Monde is a dourand humourless paper. It is worth noting, too, that mostdrawings are on the small side and so take up less spacethan is the case with cartoons in The Times or The Guardian.As for advertisements, these have always been less lavishin Le Monde than in other comparable papers, although morerecently – crise oblige – full-page full-colour ads havestarted to appear. Publicity is always aimed,conspicuously, at social classes A and B1. Presumably thefact that Le Monde’s readers are overwhelmingly people

with large disposable incomes means that ads in its pagescarry a high enough premium for the paper to need todevote relatively less space to them.

Like the graphic work, the writing is often witty too,although the jokes can probably only be fully savoured bythe restricted circle of educated and informed people whomake up the core of Le Monde’s readers. A good example ofthe paper’s mandarin style was Alain Rollat’s blow-by-blow account of the sequence of events leading up toPierre Bérégovoy’s appointment as prime minister, whichRollat treated as if it were a papal election. Of aluncheon at which the incumbent Édith Cresson and one ofher opponents Laurent Fabius managed to avoid aconfrontation, he writes: ‘les proches de Mme Cressonpurent … faire savoir, urbi et orbi, que ce déjeuner avaitété “convivial”’. Then, when her successor’s name isannounced, Agence France-Presse ‘exhale enfin la fuméeblanche … Habemus papam!’ (3.4.92:8: 3-5). Rollat’s styleand approach is witty, erudite and apt; no problem forthose who know their church Latin, of course, but what(one wonders) about the others?

That question never seems to trouble the rédaction. LikeOxbridge tutors, they can never be suspected of talkingdown to their pupils...I mean readers. (Those dots areanother Le Monde trait; the paper’s quirks are decidedlycatching.) If the readers cannot follow the long,syntactically complex sentences, appreciate the ironicunderstatements, negotiate their way through the doublenegatives, and picked up the learned allusions, that isjust too bad: they should be reading another paper. LeMonde will not alter its style to please them. Not thatthe paper always ‘talks posh’; far from it. A foreignreader like myself is often thrown by the freshly-mintedslang its sophisticated writers deploy with such aplomb;and I suspect that not a few (the double negatives arecatching, too) native readers also find that theirvocabulary is being stretched.

Perhaps the easiest introduction to an analysis of LeMonde’s style is to quote a member of the Britishmandarinate, Roy Jenkins, who must have absorbed a great

deal of such prose during his long career, not leastduring his spell as president of the European Commission.Reviewing a life of Richard Crossman, Lord Jenkins (who,it will surprise no one, is now Chancellor of OxfordUniversity) can be observed penning this very Le Monde-ishpassage: ‘[Crossman] made a religion out of revelation.It was not exactly for the sake of the truth, to whicheven his most devoted fan could not say he was peculiarlyaddicted’ (Sunday Times, 14.10.90, section 8: 1: 3). Theirony, the litotes, and the double negatives all betray aseasoned reader of the European mandarinate’s house-journal.

Le Monde’s irony comes in several forms. One is to quotein italics a blunt comment and follow it with a morediplomatic formulation in the roman main text. An exampleof this occurs in an article about the president ofArgentina and Jacques Médecin, in which the former isquoted as describing the latter as ‘un fugitif poursuivipar la justice française’. The article itself prefers,with ironic tact, to use the term ‘fugitifs en rupture deban’ when speaking about people in M. Médicin’spredicament (26.9.90: 10:6). Another is the ironic use ofan adjective or an adverb, as in this piece about Castroand Bush:

Les dirigeants américains se réjouissent de l’isolementgrandissant du ‘Lider Maximo’: ‘Il doit commencer à suer’

(de peur), a charitablement commenté George Bush. Ledépartement d’État, plus diplomatiquement, appelle à la

tenue d’élections à Cuba. (13.9.91: 7:2)

Here the ironic adverb is ‘charitablement’. Yet another –and very common – form of irony is the elaborateavoidance of blunt, affirmative statements. A goodexample is the observation that Bonn ‘did not displayexcessive indignation’ when the KGB spirited Mr Honeckerto Moscow because, as the headline makes clear, the EastGerman leader was ‘encombrant’. Translated into plainlanguage this means that the Germans were secretlypleased that the Russians had taken the ex-GDR boss offtheir hands (31.7.92: 1:1).

This ironic eschewal of candour is closely connected withanother very common form, litotes or ironicunderstatement. For example, on Mr Milosevic’sdisposition to make peace – or rather his lack of it –‘[on] n’a pas eu l’impression que c’était l’intentionimmediate du leader serbe’ (6.8.91: 1:1). On the doubtfulwisdom today of old-fashioned trade union militancy: ‘cescomportements… ne témoignent pas – c’est le moins quel’on puisse dire – d’une imagination débordante’(17.4.92:17: 1). On the potentially ham-fistedapplication of a decision: ‘l’effet psychologique…n’aurait sans doute pas été des plus heureux’ (17.5.91:1:1). On the anti-Maastricht machinations of the Toryright and on Mr Major’s plan – with French connivance –to foil them: ‘ces subtilités britanniques n’ont pasentièrement échappé aux Français’ (26.9.91: 3: 4).

Litotes is in its turn closely bound up with anotherironic form, the use of the double negative. Examples areso common I will dispense with detailed references: ‘onne peut pas ne pas se poser de questions’; ‘il n’est pasimpossible que’; ‘peut-être n’est-il pas insenséd’imaginer’; les plans sociaux ne sont portent pasintéressants’ are all typical. Indeed, it is not unfair –there I go again – to say that Le Monde rather overdoesthe double negative. It was therefore amusing to see thepaper hoist with its own petard when it failed to doublea particularly recherché negative and had to publish acorrection in a later issue: ‘il fallait lire “la pire deses non inimportants fautes” au lieu de “la pire de sesinimportantes fautes”’ (7.8.92: 13: 6).

Le Monde can also overdo elegant variation of the kindwhich, in writing for instance of M. Giscard d’Estaing,first uses his name, then refers to him as formerpresident of the republic, next as mayor of Chamalières,then as leader of the UDF, and lastly as president of theconseil général de l’Auvergne, and so on, until his Who’s Whoentry had been systematically worked through. This canmake for leaden prose, especially where, as is the casewith Michel Rocard, the politician in question is mayor

of a locality with a name as long as M. Rocard’s fief ofConflans-Sainte-Honorine (16.5.91: 11:1).

Finally, Le Monde never hesitates to use elaborate syntax.Sometimes a particular construction is sustained forseveral lines (cf. ‘on a vu la liberalisation de lacensure ouvrir… mener… déboucher… susciter… permettre…donner… induire enfin’, making a total of twenty lines,(17.10.90: 3: 4), or even developed over more than onepage (cf. ‘qui peut nier que… soit… n’a apporté… sont…résulte… limite… s’expliquent… s’abritent… peuvent…’, aparticularly elegant example – written by André Fontaine,no less – involving subtle variation between indicativeand subjunctive 10.10.90: 1, 5). Whether you prefer thissort of thing to (say) Libération’s short, staccatosentences is perhaps ultimately a matter of personaltaste. I, for my part, mostly do prefer it; I certainlythink that as long as Le Monde continues to sell standardslike this, the language of Bossuet – as the paper likesto call French – will remain the medium of discoursesuited par excellence to the clear expression of abstractideas and complex arguments.

Which brings me to my last point. A British reader of LeMonde must wish continually that we had a newspaper likethis, written in clear, elegant English to the highestjournalistic standards. Frivolous souls (‘des âmesfrivoles’, as Le Monde might say) profess to doubt whetherin the age of instant television and radio news and offax machines we need newspapers at all; they deliver thenews many hours late compared with the instantaneity ofelectronic media. But one has only to think of the recentGulf War, when one was inundated with instant, confusingand conflicting information, to recall how valuable wasthe recul provided by a good newspaper or a good journalistin sifting fact from fiction, truth from propaganda, andobjectivity from prejudice. For these benefits mostpeople are prepared to wait days if necessary, and theymake one realize that newspapers like Le Monde – thereare, alas, very few of them in the world – will always beindispensable to those who find twenty-four hour newscoverage as insubstantial as a hamburger compared to,

say, bœuf bourguignon. The real achievement of Beuve-Méry’screation is that it avoids the pitfalls of mostjournalism: a preoccupation with surface, appearance,contingency and illusion. The reader on the side of theChannel cannot help wondering, for instance, whetherBritish soldiers would still be dying in Ireland nearlyeighty years after the Easter Rising, and more thanseventy after partition, if we had had an English Siriusto cut through the muddle and the humbug, analyse withrigorous logic the available options, and point us firmlyin the direction of the only rational solution to beadopted. Decidedly, some things – and not just theadmirable TGV system – are better organized in France.

I am not alone in my disappointment at The Times’s failureof nerve. John P. Harris has said that Le Monde is to TheTimes as The Times is to The Sun these days (R4, 26.2.92).This is in part because of the widespread use in theBritish press of feature writers – of whom Bernard Levinis perhaps the best known – who are under contract tocontribute articles, usually weekly but sometimes morefrequently, in which they are encouraged to hold forth ona topic or topics of their choice. Unfortunately thesecolumns are usually quite short and therefore give animpression of ‘bittiness’, which is less marked in LeMonde where the articles tend to be longer, betterresearched and less subjective, and where a whole page,and even several pages in the case of a major event orissue (the Maastricht referendum, for instance), aregiven over to analysis by one or more of the editors orchief staff writers (currently Bruno Frappat, Jean-MarieColombani, Daniel Vernet, Jacques Amalric or ThomasFerenczi), who, as we have seen, develop a special sphereof interest and expertise, making them less ‘touche àtout’ than their British counterparts; and being on thestaff, they are not under the same obligation as ourcolumnists to come up with something interesting oramusing every day. There are of course honourableexceptions, especially in the case of politicalcommentators such as Peter Kellner, but usually Britishfeature articles give an impression of flashy

superficiality when read alongside Le Monde’s substantialétudes or enquêtes.

In any case, The Times, with a circulation around the400,000 mark, has two close rivals, The Guardian (recentlymuch improved) and The Independent (a big disappointment),and all three are outstripped in readership terms by theDaily Telegraph; furthermore, these dailies are themselvesovershadowed by the ‘quality’ Sunday papers. Thesituation is quite different in France: Le Monde has noserious rival in the daily market, and there is noequivalent in France of our bulky multi-section Sundaynewspaper. With such competition it is not altogethersurprising that The Times has difficulty in making itselfheard and so cannot adopt the lofty, olympian stancewhich comes so naturally to Le Monde. Indeed, the once-famous Times leaders have become increasingly eccentricand wayward of late. These days one has to turn to theSunday Times to hear the authentic accents of the Thundererof old (see, for example, the blistering attack on thegovernment’s ineptitude – and worse – over the BCCIbanking scandal, ‘A tale of inaction’, Sunday Times21.7.91, section 2:5, or the scorn heaped on theunedifying spectacle of ‘political pygmies [in the Toryparty] scratch[ing] each other’s eyes out’, 13.6.93,section 2: 3). Unfortunately the rest of the paper (apartfrom the excellent books section) is less serious – theegregious ‘Style and Travel’ section in particular – sothere the analogy ends. To adapt a memorable saying of F.R. Leavis’s: we shall not find The Sunday Times remarkablefor intelligence if we think of Le Monde in full cry, asin this withering denunciation of Saddam Hussein,‘Sadisme et cynisme’: 

L’exhibition, lundi, à la télévision irakienne, d’unedouzaine de pilotes [alliés] est répugnante. Quant àl’envoi de ces homes sur des sites stratégiques, il

équivaut à… un crime de sang-froid, avec cynisme, sadismeet préméditation. Depuis le nazisme, c’est quasiment une‘première’ dans la liste, pourtant longue, des horreursde la guerre… C’est la violation la plus flagrante et laplus abjecte des conventions de Genève… On peut faire

confiance [à Saddam Hussein] pour, jusqu’à sa défaite,imaginer d’autres ‘recettes’ haïssables, entre l’horreur

pure et simple et le Grand-Guignol. (23.1.91: 1:1)

Postscript (17 Febuary 2014)

The current editor of French Cultural Studies invited me to update this essay in 2013, and I began assembling material for a second article that would describe the wayLe Monde has evolved in the last twenty years: Le Monde as it is today, and not just the paper version, but the online version at lemonde.fr too. I eventually had to give up. As I wrote to him on 21 October 2013, ‘I have collected a lot of material, but can see little point nowin attempting to update "Anatomy of a Newspaper". I agreewith a recent comment from an abonné who wrote "Ce journal n'est plus que l'ombre de sa légende". It's nobody fault. Beuve-Méry's austere vision has not survived - could not have survived - the many crises afflicting Le Monde in particular and quality newspapers in general. Since the future of print journalism itself hangs in the balance, the paper version of Le Monde may well have ceased publication by the time any article I write gets into print. And even if Le Monde does manage to stagger on, anybilan will have to be très provisoire, which would not matter inan op ed piece but is not satisfactory in an academic article. Let my original essay stand as the record of a vanished world. How much longer [I added] will the New York Times - which has displaced Le Monde as the best newspaper in the world - be able to carry on in its present form?’ The editor of FCS agreed that the goalpostsare continually shifting. Since then the newspaper has appointed its first female editor-in-chief, Natalie Nougayrède. She is bilingual in French and English and is fluent in Russian,so we can expect a less Eurocentric editorial line than was the case under previous editors. Moreover, in addition to Mme Nougayrède, the paper now has far more women writers that in the past, so it no longer resemblesan all-male Oxbridge college. As for the future, Mme

Nougayrède sees her role as being to “placer la révolution numérique au cœur de son mandat”.