The argument most often used by the right wing to say that it does not matter that the media is owned by rightwing oligarchs or big corporations often linked to power (by being major government contractors) is that "most journalists are lefties", thus creating a balance.

The fact is that most journalists try to strip out their supposed personal leanings (often to the point of exageration), whereas owners very blatantly push their agendas without feeling the need to create any balance. The result are cowed or willing journalists leaning right.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

I think that they might matter - i.e. that what you are seeing here is not exactly the standard narrative but rather the same sort of thing a cynical observer could write of the old Republican 'southern strategy' - a right wing candidate, complete with his own neocons, playing on racism, fear of crime on one side, and alienated, angry, and impoverished minorities in the projects. Or at least that's what I see when, knowing Rieff's politics, I look at the article closely. Most readers here seem to have assumed the standard American neolib viewpoint and given that assumption understandably saw the standard US narrative of contemporary France.