By Lena Colle-Tri
Vincent Bolloré, often nicknamed “the French Murdoch”, is a French ultra-conservative billionaire and Mogul who built his wealth on an array of industrial investments, namely in the transportation and energy sectors, before acquiring a colossal Media Empire.
In his ‘mediatic crusade, Bolloré has pushed nationalist and xenophobic rhetoric, framing immigration as a menace and promoting “traditional Catholic values”. He has used his wide array of platforms to promote and effectively democratise his views, to great success, being seen as one of the primary orchestrators of the partial alliance of traditionally moderate right-wing party Les Républicains (LR) and far-right wing party Rassemblement National (RN) in the last legislative elections. His channel CNews, repeatedly sanctioned for extremist statements (abortion is contrary to the mission of women” “climate change does not exist”, “migrant children are thieves, assassins and rapists)[LS1] , became France’s most-watched news channel before its scheduled deprogramming in April 2025.
This piece wishes to explore how Bolloré has managed to transform the French Media landscape into a tool for him to push his agenda or “banalisation of nationalism” and right-wing ideas.
Academic Alexandra Colineau describes Bollores strategy when buying new media compounds being to “empty them from their historic identity before exploiting them to promote his radical agenda. , First, when he acquired the sister news channel affiliated to Canal +, Itélé, subsequently renaming it CNews, % of the staff went on strike, on fears that their journalistic independence and integrity would be compromised. The vast majority of the staff that participated in the strike was later dismissed and replaced by Bolloré-adjacent journalists. Bolloré equally removed most of the investigative journalism content, in favour of on-set discussions, giving platforms to a lot of polemicists, for instance Eric Zemmour being given a daily segment on the channel. In the ten years of the existence of CNews, the number of segments concerning immigration effectively tripled, being the most prominent topic on the channel, the topic of the danger of “wokism” coming second. In the eyes of many observers, CNews became *an opinion channel” rather than the news channel it used to be, claiming the ambition of becoming the “French Fox News”.
A similar mechanism happened when he acquired the JDD, where most of the staff went on strike, when Bolloré appointed Geoffrey Lejeune, who was the director of French newspaper “Valeurs Actuelles”, reputed for its far-right extremely conservative stances, repeatedly being sanctioned for racist front pages and incitement to hatred, as editor-in-chief. He also appointed a close friend and supporter of his ideas at the top of the Europe 1 radio station. When asked about his overbearing influence on the French media landscape, Bolloré declares in front of the Senate being a “moderate right-wing christian man” and as having “no creative influence on what gets said in the media platforms he owns.
But how has Bolloré been so successful in imposing his agenda on the larger population? Media historian Alexis Levrier compares ‘Bollorisation’ to Coty’s 1930s attempt to spread fascist ideas via media, popularising the idea of “doing politics without going into politics” – Bollorés ideas ultimately having way more traction and long-term influence on the general public. Indeed, he went through a campaign of normalisation of most of the terms that previously were associated to nationalist xenophobic rhetoric such as the term “Great Replacement”. The creator of that term Renaud Camus, was a frequent flyer in CNews for several years, helping popularise the term, to the point it became one of the recurrent points during the last French elections. “Bolloré Loop”, where any TV channel you would go to, or radio station, or newspaper you would see[LS5] the same terms being repeated and endorsed “banalising the vocabulary of the far-right”.
Another tool at the disposal of Bolloré in the democratisation of far-right ideas as a socially acceptable stance, is “Touche Pas à Mon Poste” (TPMPthe most watched prime time show in France. TPMP as part of the C8 channel is, in the same manner as CNews being removed from programmation for excessive breaches of institutional regulations of TV.[LS6] Hanouna participates heavily in propagating the ideas of Bolloré, popularising to the “average” French household the alleged “dangers” of the immigrants, often in areas with barely any immigration, which makes publicly declaring your animosity to foreigners a public and accepted view.
“Never has such an influence been utilised to promote such a far-right agenda wrote Alexis Levrier on Bollorés growing influence in the French media. Although the creative establishment seems to wake up to the issue of the propagation of possibly dangerous and fallacious content on national mainstream television and cancelling both C8 and CNews, one might argue it has been done too late. This anchors itself in a broader landscape of most media pushing into the extremes, and Bolloré led mediums are not the only ones pushing for the nationalist agenda. Far-right wing ideology is still gaining traction all over France, the far-right effectively replacing the traditional right, the extreme becoming the normal. Many thinkers see this as an “absolute personal victory” for Vincent Bolloré, who’s Media Empire has been just as essential as his key friendships to many French politicians for his agenda to enter and make its definite place in the mainstream.
Bibliography:
France 24-Comment Bolloré et son Empire Médiatique ont porté l’extrême droite aux portes du pouvoir (02/07/2024)
Le Monde-Vincent Bolloré parrain d’une alliance entre la droite et l’extrême droite
RFI-Vincent Bolloré et son empire médiatique, un tremplin pour l’extrême droite
Mediacités-Bolloré, ses médias et l’extrême droite
Médiapart-Dossier la croisade culturelle de Vincent Bolloré
Identity Hunters 