Is Le Pen Mightier Than the Sword?

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Yesterday, a court in France handed down a bombshell verdict with huge ramifications for the country’s politics, finding Marine Le Pen, the figurehead of the far-right Rassemblement National party and two-time presidential runner-up, guilty of embezzlement. The charges stemmed from a system that the party was accused of putting in place to divert staffing budgets for its members of the European Parliament, the legislative arm of the European Union, to pay people to work for the party itself; alongside Le Pen, nearly two dozen other officials and staffers were convicted, as was the party itself. (“Jesus Christ also was found guilty, and he was innocent,” one of the other defendants said of the verdict.) Le Pen was handed a hefty fine, a four-year prison sentence (though she likely won’t see jail)—and, crucially, a ban on running for public office for five years, effectively ruling her out of the next presidential contest, in 2027, for which she was considered the front-runner. The ban is effective immediately; Le Pen can appeal, but that process is likely to be slow.

Le Pen walked out of court, which was stuffed with journalists, before her fate had fully been revealed; later, she was filmed exiting the headquarters of her party without speaking to the media hordes assembled outside. She would soon have her say, however, sitting for an interview on TF1, traditionally France’s biggest privately owned network, during which she decried a “political decision,” “a disastrous day for our democracy,” and “practices that we thought were the preserve of authoritarian regimes” while dismissing the charges against her as stemming from an “administrative disagreement” with the European Parliament. (Fact checkers at Le Monde quickly pointed out that this claim was “fallacious.”) This morning, allies from her party launched what the same paper described as a wider “media riposte,” fanning out across the airwaves. Jordan Bardella, a Le Pen protégé who serves as the party’s president, went on CNews and Europe 1, a pair of properties owned by the company of the right-wing billionaire Vincent Bolloré, and took aim at supposed judicial “tyranny.” He also likened the verdict against Le Pen to the recent move by authorities in Romania to ban Cǎlin Georgescu—a little-known populist who came from nowhere to win the first round of an election last year, thanks to TikTok or Russian meddling or both, depending on who you believe—from standing in a do-over of that election after the first vote was annulled.

As I wrote recently, Georgescu’s treatment has become a cause célèbre for the global populist right and its media, not least in the US; Alex Jones interviewed him, Elon Musk defended him, and Vice President J.D. Vance mentioned him in a broader speech haranguing European leaders for their supposed backsliding on democracy and free speech. Unsurprisingly, the conviction of Le Pen—who is a much better-known global figure than Georgescu—has already triggered the same sorts of dynamics. Far-right foreign leaders including Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, expressed solidarity by tweeting “Je suis Marine!” In the US, Musk—taking time out from donning a cheesehead and doling out million-dollar checks to voters in Wisconsin ahead of a state Supreme Court election that he has cast as existential for “the future of civilization”—characterized the conviction as part of a standard left-wing “playbook” to rig elections by jailing opponents, while Tammy Bruce, a State Department spokesperson, pointed both to Vance’s speech and to what she called “aggressive and corrupt lawfare” against Donald Trump; later, a reporter asked Trump himself about the verdict during an Oval Office signing ceremony with a flamboyantly clad Kid Rock, and he called it “a big deal.” (“I know all about it,” he added, unconvincingly.) Laura Ingraham, of Fox News, said that the “globalists” had come for Le Pen, and raised the case on her show. 

Beyond this global context, Bardella also invoked decidedly French parallels to Le Pen’s conviction, which were by turns lesser-known abroad and downright obscure. One of these involved an ongoing case involving the former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been accused (among other things) of illicitly using cash from the Gaddhafi regime in Libya to finance a campaign. (I wrote about Sarkozy as a kind of parable for Trump in this regard after the latter was charged in the New York hush money case in 2023.) The other involved a decision by a French media regulator to decline to renew the terrestrial broadcast rights of C8, a channel that, like CNews, is owned by Bolloré’s group. Indeed, Bardella wasn’t the only one to invoke C8 yesterday; other far-right politicians did so, too, as did various commentators—not least on CNews. “A bad wind is blowing in this country,” one political journalist at the network said on air. “The French people are no longer masters of their destiny. Certain judges, magistrates, and high officials make choices in their place,” telling them “what they mustn’t watch on television and for whom they mustn’t vote.” (He then also mentioned Romania and Vance, calling the latter’s speech “prophetic.”)

I mentioned the broader license-renewal process in a couple of newsletters last year, including one on the growing influence of the Bolloré media empire in advancing the themes of the political right; various critics of CNews and C8—which between them had been rapped many times for breaking well-established rules around media pluralism and other things, with the latter alone racking up more than seven million euros in fines in recent years—hoped that the regulator might take the opportunity, in light of these infractions against the public interest, to block the networks from broadcasting on publicly owned frequencies, but one told me at the time that he didn’t expect this to actually happen. A few months later, as C8 applied for its renewal, it made some promises that seemed designed to mollify its critics, including that it would broadcast the show of Cyril Hanouna—a highly controversial star host and fine-magnet—on a time delay so as better to control his output. But the regulator evidently was not convinced, ultimately deciding not to renew C8. (Another channel was also denied a renewal, but on grounds that had more to do with a lack of originality in its programming; the two channels would be replaced by new entrants spearheaded, respectively, by the owners of Ouest-France, a regional newspaper, and Daniel Křetínský, a controversial Czech media mogul who I wrote about in 2020.)

The C8 decision was a sharp blow to the network, to be sure, but it would still have the option of moving online or to a cable platform, and Hanouna could simply take his show to a different terrestrial network (something that is, indeed, now in the process of happening). Observers like Reporters Without Borders—hardly an advocate of muzzling the media—praised the regulator’s decision as a victory for pluralism over Bolloré’s growing influence, and as accountability for C8’s own misconduct. Others criticized the regulator for not going far enough; Aurélien Santoul, a left-wing lawmaker who had served on a legislative panel examining the frequencies process, questioned how CNews had been granted a renewal if C8 wasn’t. (News networks receiving renewals were required to commit to conditions guaranteeing respect for the rules, at least on paper.) But figures on the right—not least at outlets owned by Bolloré—were up in arms, at the time of the initial decision and then again a few weeks ago, after it was confirmed that C8 would lose its frequency at the end of February. Le Pen’s party circulated a petition opposing “ideological censorship.” Le Pen herself described the decision as a victory for the “ayatollahs of singular thought,” who want only the voice of the “system” to be heard.

Observers in mainstream media precincts dismantled this sort of claim: Le Monde’s Aude Dassonville noted in an analysis that the frequencies process was executed on a set schedule and in accordance with applicable laws; the same paper’s editorial board called talk of censorship “insidious,” and the outgrowth of a broader right-wing campaign, turbocharged by Trump’s victory in the US, to challenge the rule of law under the pretext of a threat to free expression. Fast-forward a few weeks, and liberal reactions to yesterday’s verdict against Le Pen, and the attendant right-wing narrative that it reflects the onset of totalitarianism, have been similar. This morning, Le Monde wrote in an editorial that the judges in her case merely applied penalties that politicians had themselves legislated in the name of strengthening democracy, and noted that other politicians have been similarly punished. Fabrice Arfi, a journalist at the independent outlet Mediapart (think: a French ProPublica) who has investigated various scandals involving Sarkozy, wrote, of both the latter’s case and Le Pen’s, that “there is not a ‘Republic of judges,’ but judges of the Republic.” “C8, Sarkozy, Le Pen,” Sébastien Tronche, a political journalist at Libération, added: “When you don’t respect the rules, you’re punished. Simple. Basic.”

The idea that hard-right perspectives are being systematically censored in France belies reality—not least in the media space, where, as I’ve written repeatedly, such ideas have, in recent years, been increasingly mainstreamed, in no small part due to the growing footprint of the Bolloré universe but by no means exclusively because of that, in a political climate that has tilted in a rightward direction more broadly. This all came to a head last summer, when Le Pen’s party came out on top in the first round of snap legislative elections, and Bolloré’s support was credited with helping her get there. (Among other things, the leader of a traditionally mainstream right-wing bloc reportedly called on him in private before deciding to controversially ally with Le Pen’s party—though the wider narrative here is not without nuance; Bolloré is reported to have looked unfavorably on Le Pen in the past.) In the end, Le Pen’s party was beaten into a surprise third place in the second round of those elections, a result of candidates opposed to it coalescing in a so-called “republican front.” And yet, as I noted at the time, the party still made significant gains in those elections—and the broader cultural impulse to block it from institutional power, which once held sway across large parts of the media, as elsewhere, appears to have significantly eroded. Le Pen and her allies going on major news networks to condemn the verdict against her hardly screams “censorship.” Nor does the wave of outraged right-wing coverage that has taken aim at the justice system in the cases of both Le Pen and Sarkozy, as Le Monde’s Françoise Fressoz detailed this morning. (Yesterday, CNews played a string of viewer-submitted videos all condemning Le Pen’s treatment. Saintoul, the left-wing lawmaker, quickly asked the media regulator to investigate the segment, accusing Bolloré’s “empire” of spreading “propaganda” on Le Pen’s behalf.)

Nor has Le Pen’s party been banished from the electoral scene: it can still stand a candidate in 2027, even if, at present, it looks unlikely to be her. Bardella, her protégé, is considered to be next in line—even though he is only twenty-nine years old. As I wrote after Trump was reelected last year, Bardella represents how the RN has sought to mainstream itself in traditional French media—he is a regular on the networks, where he presents a highly polished image—but is also deft at navigating and leveraging the alternative media currents that are currently signal-boosting right-wing populism globally. (Though again, there are nuances to Bardella’s place in this global populist alt-media picture: he recently canceled a speech at CPAC, the festival of US conservatism, after Steve Bannon appeared to give a Nazi salute from the stage, leading Bannon to dismiss Bardella as “a little boy.”) He has proven particularly adept at using TikTok, where he has gained a sizable following by, for example, eating candy and engaging slyly with romantic political fan fiction. Since the Le Pen verdict came down, he has only posted once to the platform: a screenshot of a tweet that he put up yesterday. “Today, it’s not only Marine Le Pen who’s been unjustly convicted,” he wrote. “It’s French democracy that has been executed.”

Other notable stories:

• CJR’s Sewell Chan reports that the Center for Public Integrity, a thirty-six-year-old nonprofit newsroom that “won acclaim for its investigations but has endured financial and organizational turmoil for much of the past decade,” has ceased publishing and is in talks to hand off its archives to the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group focused on corruption. Over the past year, “CPI has essentially collapsed,” Chan writes, with budget goals being missed, top editors leaving, and a possible merger with another news nonprofit falling through. During this period, the board chair, Wesley Lowery—a prominent journalist who recently left a different job following allegations, which we reported on, about his personal conduct—was effectively overseeing the newsroom, but he has now resigned, Chan reports.   

• In yesterday’s newsletter, we noted reports that the White House was planning to begin dictating who sits where in its press briefing room, in what would be its latest attempt to wrest power away from the White House Correspondents’ Association, which has traditionally controlled seating assignments. Yesterday, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, confirmed that such plans are being considered. And the WHCA pushed back, accusing officials of trying to “exert pressure on journalists over coverage they disagree with.” Per Semafor, WHCA members have discussed holding a “sit-in” in protest, leading Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, to respond, ““Hahahahahahahaha…..…hahahahahahahahaha.” 

• On the subject of Cheung, The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey is out with a profile dubbing him “the voice of Trump” and detailing his strategy of “relentless aggression,” bringing “all that is authentically vulgar, unflinching, and cruel about his boss to official White House statements.” The “paradox of Cheung” is that behind the scenes, many reporters view him as “a uniquely pleasant and straightforward aide in Trump’s mostly toxic orbit,” Godfrey writes. “He will engage journalists in pleasant chitchat, argue good-naturedly about the finer points of a story, and then fire off a public insult.” By all accounts, Godfrey reports, “Trump loves him.”
  
• On Substack, Matt Pearce jumped off the recent media discourse surrounding “abundance”—the idea, pushed by writers including Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, that Democrats should embrace an agenda defined by building and inventing things—and asked whether an equivalent agenda could be defined for the news business. “Journalism’s problem isn’t that it needs to build more news printing plants or physical newsrooms,” Pearce writes, but rather the emergence of a vast “informational wasteland” that needs more public and private news production.

• And Nieman Lab’s Neel Dhanesha reports on ProPublica’s decision to station a truck outside federal office buildings in DC with LED billboard displays informing workers affected by Trump and Musk’s massive cuts as to how they might become sources for its journalists. The operation “drew in people from across the newsroom, from interactive designers who usually work on the ProPublica website to copy editors who commented on how they’d never been asked to proofread a truck before.”

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