Owners may be billionaires, but most journalists belong to the leftwing (as most intellectuals).
I don't know the French situation, but in those countries that I do have fist-hand experience of, that's a myth. Danish and American newsies span the entire Overton Window, in rough proportion to the general population (and in both cases, the Overton Window is almost entirely right-of-centre...).
And even if it were true, the owners still appoint the editors, who are the ones who ultimately decide what gets published (and how to spin it). Moreover, by moving more and more "news" from investigating reporting to cut-and-paste from press releases and stories ghostwritten by belief tanks and spin doctors, current trends place even greater control in the hands of the moneyed oligarchs.
On the contrary, subsidised outlets dont always mean independence and impartiality.
Which is why staffing it with tenured civil servants is so important. Impartiality is, of course, an impossible demand, just as objectivity is. But independence is valuable in and of itself.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Any notion that journalists working for Le Figaro, L'Express, Le Point, Paris Match, financial dailies La Tribune and Les Echos, or Le Parisien, are a bunch of "leftwingers" depends on how far you can drag the Overton Window to the right, and nothing else.
They made a poll at some point, may be I'll find a link if there is one, and 80% of French journalists declared themselves leftwing.
(btw you forget to mention Marianne, NouvelObs', Liberation, Monde, Le Parisien, l'Express, Challenge ) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
But they seem to have come to their senses (inasmuch a major American news outlet can be said to have come to its senses recently) around 2005, when it was obvious to everybody that Vietraq was gonna end in Peace with Honour. Whereas the genuine neocon house organs like the New York Post or Washington "Moonie" Times... not so much.
You may colour me unsurprised that Time Magazine supported Bush and now supports Obama. Time always supports The Powers That Be. They know which side their bread is buttered on; mistake that for conviction at your peril.
The others, I conceded, so didn't mention. Though Libération and Le Monde have certainly moved rightwards over the past thirty years, as they have become progressively more in hock to big investors.
My point is that your sweeping generalisation that journalists are "leftwing" doesn't hold good. It's an often-stated narrative meant to somehow dilute the power of big money and rightwing ideology over the press. In other words, one of the means of shifting the Overton Window.
