Figaro's Prerogatives

Whoever heard of reporters dictating a newspaper's editorial policy? Or holding veto power over the hiring of an editor-in-chief? Or controlling layout? Such radical conditions prevail at Le Figaro, France's leading conservative newspaper. Its 250 reporters, columnists and sub-editors have long enjoyed these prerogatives under a special agreement with the paper's owners. But now, management wants to reassert its right to manage. To show just how they felt about that idea, Figaro's staff last week staged a one-day strike.

Never in its 102-year history, had Figaro missed an edition. Proper Parisians would no more think of doing without Figaro at breakfast than croissants. Employee control has not kept it from being the unabashed bastion of the French bourgeoisie; its sober, sensible columns rarely stoop to scandal or crusading.

No Macaroni Factory. The current crisis has its origins in the chaotic conditions that prevailed in France after World War II. In 1949, Jean Prouvost, a press baron (Paris-Match, Paris-Soir) as well as France's largest woolens manufacturer, purchased a controlling interest in Figaro. But because he had served briefly in the collaborationist Vichy regime, both Gaullists and leftists opposed letting him assume editorial command. So he signed an agreement with Figaro's noted editor, Pierre Brisson, who had killed off the paper during World War II rather than knuckle under to the Nazis. The agreement gave Brisson and his colleagues complete freedom to direct the paper.

When Brisson died four years ago, Prouvost decided that he wanted more than financial satisfaction from his investment. Though the crusty, 83-year-old industrialist-publisher has refused to negotiate directly with Figaro's staff, his objectives have been clearly announced. "We favor the independence of newspapermen," says one of his underlings, "but the legal owners of Figaro are entitled to run their newspaper as they see fit, which includes the right to fire an editor-in-chief. We are living in a capitalist society, are we not?" To which the head of Figaro's journalists' association heatedly replies: "A newspaper is an enterprise of public interest, not a macaroni factory."

Last week's brief strike was a foretaste of the growing bitterness of the dispute. Prouvost is offering the editorial workers a voice in the management team that he proposes to set up when the old agreement finally lapses next May. Figaro's staff members are opposed because, at best, they would have only a weak, minority voice. They also recall all too well Prouvost's editorial shakeup at Paris-Match, France's leading picture magazine (TIME, July 12). With no solution in sight, other Paris newspapermen and publishers are squaring off on the sidelines, in preparation for what may well become a classic confrontation in French journalism.

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