From the far right to corruption

Press distribution is a hot topic. A bill reforming the 1947 Bichet law will be discussed this spring. The stakes are high: it is about “modernizing the legislative environment, without breaking the fundamentals that make the press distribution system successful,” declared the Minister of Culture, Franck Riester. The formula is at the very least biased in a context of crisis where, over the last ten years, sales have fallen by 50%, turnover by 40%, and where the main courier (Presstalis) was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2017.

Jean-Yves Mollier’s book helps to put into perspective the intertwined issues of pluralism in the written press, the industrial organization that makes it possible and, of course, the political clashes to which it gives rise. Despite its somewhat bloated title (The Golden Age of Parliamentary Corruption), this extensive research offers a detailed analysis of the power of Hachette messaging. The question is still relevant today.

Proximity to the extreme right

The book reconstructs the history of the Hachette mail services, which took off from 1865, when newspaper sales exceeded those of books. While remaining a publisher, Hachette seized the opportunity of distribution by establishing itself in train stations and the metro, by obtaining exemptions from the postal monopoly and by setting up a modern work organization.

From the 1930s, the denunciation of this monopolistic enterprise (with the image of the octopus) took shape. The context of crisis caused by the major scandals (Panama, M^me Hanau, Stavisky, etc.) and the growing desire of the CGT and the Communist Party to nationalize the distribution of the press threaten the Hachette bookstore and its couriers. All the more so since the company does not hold back from maneuvers to hinder the distribution of newspapers linked to the Communist Party (The Friend of the People, Working Life).

1936 was the occasion of the first confrontation in which the survival of this large group was at stake. Leaders such as Léon Blum and Paul Vaillant-Couturier wanted to “free the press from the forces of money” by introducing anti-trust provisions. The unions virulently denounced the exploitation of workers in the group’s companies. Hachette was also accused of distributing magazines deemed provocative by the virtue leagues. Roger Salengro, defamed by the far-right press (distributed by Hachette), committed suicide in 1936.

All these factors converged towards the group being placed under supervision or broken up. But the government procrastinated, opposition grew stronger and the project was finally rejected in February 1938. Although Hachette’s leaders were considered close to the ideas of Charles Maurras, their economic and financial action had enabled them to rally numerous political supporters.

Escape from nationalization

At the Liberation, threats against Hachette resumed, if only because of the relations maintained with pro-German newspapers. But the accusation was insufficient and the tension was strong between the need to structure the means of information and the fear of a return to a propaganda administration. The defense of the Resistance program and the fear of strengthening an information monopoly were then constant references. In addition, in opposition to the unions, the government considered the creation of a professional school for book trades that would counter their recruitment monopoly. Anticommunism also became a cross-cutting issue in the political field.

The Hachette group will skillfully play on these divisions to escape nationalization. With banking support, it creates a false nose in distribution: the Expeditive. The SFIO was divided over the issue of the distribution of its newspaper, Le Populaire. In 1947, controversy persisted over whether or not Hachette should be punished as a company that had collaborated with the occupier.

The counter-offensive led by the Hachette management team will bear fruit. A bill is being put forward by Robert Bichet, MP MRPin February 1947. At the Liberation, General de Gaulle had appointed him head of the Information Services. He was also Under-Secretary of State for Information in the Bidault government in 1946. Officially, the bill was drawn up in coordination with the Ministries of Information and Finance. It was a compromise text between the multiple interests involved and largely sparing Hachette, finally adopted in April 1947.

THE PCF and the SFIO were satisfied, with the presence of the State on the board of directors of Nouvelles Messageries de Presse and the ban on refusing to distribute a newspaper because of its political positions. For its part, Hachette obtained compensation for the sequestration of its establishments between 1944 and 1947 and the company recovered its real estate assets.

Collusions

Jean-Yves Mollier shows, with supporting archives, that the text was prepared by a small group of political actors in close contact with the distribution group. Jacques Chaban-Delmas, hostile to nationalizations, his brother-in-law André Schmit and a senior civil servant of the Ministry of Information, Robert Bouveret, ensured the links between Hachette, the government and Parliament. In addition, a group of deputies who had undoubtedly benefited from Hachette’s generosity actively supported the text sparing the publisher-distributor:

Belonging to the right and left of the political spectrum, from the Republican Party of Freedom to the Unified Socialist Party, including the Independents and Peasants, the MRPL’UDSRthe Radical Bet, the SFIOTHE FGDSthe Gaullist Union then theUNRthese men have all, at one time or another, influenced the decisions of their political party in order to facilitate the development strategy of a large private company. (p. 291)

The investigation therefore concludes with the observation of a strong interweaving between the political, media and business worlds. Developed in their modern form from the Third Republic and despite repeated announcements of normalization, attacks on probity and the influence of private interests on public issues have flourished. The moments of political rupture of the Popular Front or the Liberation have in no way curbed this structural problem.

It was not until the end of the 1980s that the problem of the relationship between money and politics began to be raised. Since the 2000s, the regulation of conflicts of interest has also begun. But all this is done incrementally. In addition, beyond the periods of mobilization inherent in a few crises (Cahuzac, Fillon), public attention remains fragile and reactions much less severe than one might think. Thus, counter-intuitively, since the 2000s, the number of convictions for breaches of probity has decreased, as has the level of sentences handed down Pierre Lascoumes, Carla Nagels, Sociology of delinquent elites, from white-collar crime to political corruption, Paris, Armand Colin, p. 103-104.)).