Nicolas Sarkozy has announced $770M in emergency aid for France's troubled newspaper industry and declared that every 18-year-old in France would get a year's free subscription to the paper of their choice to boost reading habits.
The crisis-hit French press is among the least profitable in Europe, stifled by rigid communist print unions, a lack of kiosks selling papers and a declining readership far below that of the UK or Germany.
The public's trust in the media is at an all-time low in a climate where politicians rewrite their own interviews for publication and the president's powerful business friends, from construction to arms manufacturing, own several major papers or TV stations. Sarkozy has also been likened by his political opponents to Silvio Berlusconi for his recent moves to tighten state control of public TV.
The press remains largely the preserve of the elite and as a result there is no popular mass-market newspapers. The biggest daily seller in France is the sports paper L'Equipe. In addition, regional papers sell far more than the nationals.
No comments:
Post a Comment