The affair placed the subject of press freedom at the heart of the debates.
Rodolphe Saadé, boss of the shipowner CMA CGM, "never intervened in La Provence", a regional daily which experienced a crisis around a front page on Emmanuel Macron's visit to Marseille, the general director said on Monday of the group's media subsidiary.
Journalists from the regional daily ended on Monday the strike they began on Friday in reaction to the dismissal of the publication's director, who has since been reinstated and said he had obtained guarantees of "editorial independence".
But according to Jean-Christophe Tortora, head of Whynot Media, Rodolphe Saadé “never intervened in this matter”.
After being informed of this layoff on Thursday, “he gave us no instructions,” he told Le Figaro.
“He has never done it in La Provence, since his CMA CGM group owned it.
If he was involved in editorial interference, do you think he would have waited a year and a half to get involved in the front pages and the topics?
" he added.
“He speaks as an industrialist”
And to insist: “Rodolphe Saadé manages a group of 170,000 employees.
When we talk, he talks to me about external growth, recruitment needs, future challenges for BFM and RMC (
which he is going to buy
).
He speaks as an industrialist, not as an editor who would request an article or express his dissatisfaction with a front page.
Also read “If Saadé wanted to set fire”: after their surprise takeover, a roller coaster week at BFMTV and RMC
The director of the media subsidiary assures that he will do “everything to recreate confidence and erase the after-effects of this crisis”.
This episode showed, according to him, “a problem of trust between the general management and the editorial management” who must “work together by returning to the method”.