Political orientation of French and foreign newspapers

156 thoughts on “Political orientation of French and foreign newspapers”

1. Yes, this denial of the existence of an extreme left says a lot about the objectivity of this classification.

2. This ranking is of little interest. From the moment no information is given as to the criteria used, the article can be thrown in the trash because this means that the classification is only made from impressions, subjectivities and ideological biases. oriented (intentionally or not). The proof is in the simple vocabulary used: we say far-right but not far-left (we will prefer communist left or just left). Above all, we must not forget that the left and the right change over time. The left of 60 years ago is not at all the left of today, the same for the right, and even within each political side, there are dissensions. It would have been wiser to put specific criteria (example: progressive/conservative, sovereigntist/globalist, etc.), and then place the newspapers for each criterion and of course by putting links showing the articles which made it possible to make the choice. The political side does not matter, only the ideas count.

   1. Thank you for this comment, which besides the excessive tone remains very interesting for the readers of the site.Note that our article has no scientific ambition and does not claim to be such. It is rather a question, as indicated from the first words, of providing practical and essential benchmarks for tests based on reading articles. The more precise binary criteria that you are considering are indeed great prospects to explore, which we did not wait to do in detail in the link already given in the middle of the article, Repeated here. Let us take this opportunity to recall that if a general trend emerges, this political color does not remove the internal contrasts and singularities within each editorial office. Two editorial writers with sometimes antagonistic thoughts can very well rub shoulders or take turns within the same periodical, even if this remains rare. We therefore approve of your desire to insist on ideas, we nevertheless maintain that what you call a political edge also counts, and we add as a reminder that singularities have their place there. It is these same singularities, these more personal opinions, to which we encourage our readers in the comments. A reading of the dozens of thoughts already delivered here offers such a wealth of much more personal insights.

      1. You haven’t answered the main point: why refuse to pronounce the word “extreme left” when you pronounce the word “extreme right” well? Indeed, to quote Wikipedia’s “Far Right” article As the political scientistJean-Yves Camus, in France, the term is almost never assumed by those who belong to it, preferring, like National Rally, the terms of “national right” or “national movement”2.

         1. Good morning, There is absolutely no resistance to talking about the extreme left on our part, and communism is very clearly an extreme left ideology. We understand the argument of an asymmetry in our article, in which we qualify certain newspapers as extreme right and specify communist for others. We will update our article soon to bring new clarity to this. Remember that we are absolutely independent of Sciences Po and know its political color, the reading of This other article will convince you. So see you soon, The Academics in Politics team.

3. Hello, This classification is made by whom? according to what data? There is no signature or source. It’s a bit embarrassing for an institution like science po… But not very surprising.

4. Marianne is far from being a leftist newspaper, rather extreme right! Editorial line announced as chasing leftist Islamists and anti-racists, sovereignist director and close without hiding from the ideals of Dupont Aignan…

   1. Thank you for your comment, which reminded us to update the policy orientation of Marianne magazine. The Academics in Politics team

   2. Here is a beautiful formatted sauce melecnhoniste!

5. Le figaro: centre-right JDD: centre-left Le Point: centre-right Current values: pro-Israeli right Marianne: secular left Nouvel Obs: Le figaro: liberal right JDD: Right Le Point: Right Current values: conservative right, see far right Marianne: Center Nouvel Obs: Far left Liberation: Far left Le Monde: Left L’Humanité: post-Joseph Stalinist

   1. @Xiep: You have listed the same newspapers several times, changing their affiliation… (eg JDD ranked centre-left, then right; Le Point centre-right then right…). What is the meaning of your comment?

6. Quite by chance I “stumbled upon” this spiel which I hasten to comment on. I don’t consider newspaper classification essential. Everyone knows very easily what to expect, especially when one has closely followed the political life of the last 60 years. On the other hand, I am extremely shocked by the haughty, pretentious speech, imbued with the most hateful arrogance of the person who dared to write that a future Sciences Po student had better fit into the mould. Understood: there is no place for a student with ideas different from those of the majority. The Sciences Po are left, that we knew, the teachers are left, we suspected, the correctors are left, it’s scandalous. In fact, that the students are predominantly on the left is no longer surprising given the selection, the terrorist discourse, and the brainwashing that ensues.

7. but what a joke, liberation it would be the left. there is no more extreme left than this tea towel! If you are able to put that current values is extreme right but that no newspaper would be on the extreme left, it means that you have a damn divergent intellectual strabismus! poor of you!

   1. No source, no link, no study. Moreover, as the people at Sciences PO are on the left and the extreme left and engage in activism within their own courses, we can largely question this classification. Moreover, considering the HuffPost as a simple left demonstrates how biased all this is.

8. Current Values is not far-right. So stop casting anathemas for the sole reason of guaranteeing your little pseudo-intellectual comfort.

   1. No, he’s on the right and leftists don’t like it, nuance!

9. Time magazine would be Republican!? Have you already read it? I have big doubts. There is an African American or a Latino on each page, the image they send back of Trump is not very flattering… For me it is very clearly a pro-Democrat newspaper.

10. Well, reading you, I imagine you, perhaps wrongly moreover, as young and beautiful or beautiful intellectuals committed and all well educated. For what ? Because the press has never been independent, at most in historic and rare moments, has it shown courage or real pedagogy, and no doubt thanks to a few journalists. And today with digital, information is very instantaneous and therefore not very verified, it is above all very assertive, very vindictive and above all very anonymous, and therefore not very instructive in the primary sense of the term. The only solution, it seems to me, is to read several different titles and check the resonances yourself here and there, including in the field (with real people). Newspapers before being right-wing or left-wing, if that still makes sense in Europe (already the German left and the French left are not the same thing), so before any orientation, they belong above all to financial groups, for certain subjects, this is sometimes more important than orientation. The question is: what are, what is their interest and why? In France, we must also take into account the weight of a unique and very social thought, before being a democrat, liberal, protester or populist. So look for the felt info instead of the real and objective info and you will be more ready or close to the economic and political situation! The future will tell us the rest. Malvin, private citizen

11. the left-wing espresso newspaper has some who smoke hard

12. @Emilie: don’t trust titles these days. I bought National Geographic 2 or 3 months ago. I thought I would find geography articles, instead I came across a 20 or 30 p hagiography on Picasso and his old crusts and an article on the restoration of old books… What connection? Mystery.

13. The press is opportunistic, it turns its jacket around depending on who is in power. As for the Diplomatic World mentioned above, it should buy L’Humanité… it’s not about geopolitics but about Karl Marx, May 68 and culture.

14. The World is more and more at the center economically.

15. Hello There is nothing modern about the press in paper format. Whether it’s the Diplo or the 1 hebdo, everyone claims to be doing analysis and being against the mainstream media, but they’re the same. Already, most of those who write in it are veterans of the World. Secondly, they still believe they are in the 1950s: they refuse to apply the spelling reform of 1990, write the man with a small h and claim to be non-sexist, have a paper format that is impossible to use in transport, in the archives and above all impose their vision of the world on you, sitting quietly in their warm office… Recently I bought Ebdo, a newcomer who wants to be different, modern, with substantive subjects, etc. It’s as usual, 100 pages of emptiness that teach us nothing. It seems that next month there will be another new weekly, entitled Vraiment, which will also be different and will do analysis… I’m already fed up.

16. don’t know if we learn that at science-po, but I think we have to start by re-situating political concepts. Knowing that capitalism is the dominant ideology and that it has taken over or marginalized the various concepts. Here’s a far-left look at the facts of history: Fundamentally, the left cannot be capitalist. Since it implements its creativity to organize a society where the collective interest takes precedence, which is contradictory with capitalism. It is in its methods that one can roughly categorize the left into three currents: Socialist reformists therefore non-revolutionary. Karl Marxists, revolutionary socialists (people’s dictatorship as a transition to anarchism) Anarchists, revolutionary socialists, the most direct regarding the application of the socialist project (universal federation of groups on a human scale, organizations close to direct democracy). Anarchism being the least known current nowadays, it should be known that anarchists are the least represented in the contemporary mass paper media and even less on television. They are generally not represented by a political party either, but are indeed a political force present (as a reminder, abstention is the first party in France). Force more or less influential and established in power in the West, in particular from the commune of Paris until the revolutions in the first half of the twenty-first century. Several socialist ideas applied first by the anarchists (ex: cf commune of Paris) or defended by the syndicalist anarchism were finally adopted by the French state. It is the heritage of social achievements. Not so acquired you will say to me… In addition one little to classify Mélanchon like heir to the reformist socialism, such as, last in date with the power, the popular front. But François Hollande is not a socialist, because he is a capitalist. It should be noted that the pseudo-socialist party is today paying for its profound contradiction. As for ecology, it is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism, no offense to the greenwashers, but as a social project it blends into the three socialist currents. Our dear, very dear capitalists for their part do not have the collective interest as their end. Whatever they say, they serve above all the interests of the big landowners. Moreover, they have no real social project, except that of organizing everything around a capitalist economy (this is only one field among others of politics), whether it is for example a fascist state or a plural representative democracy. We can situate the different currents in their conception of a centralized state in relation to capital: Centrists: state framing capital to partly maintain republican values. Right: State framing capital as little as possible, but state for all that essential to its maintenance. Far right: populist authoritarianism using racism and nationalism. The rest of the ideology being quite vague and variable, but like all dictatorships, always ultimately capitalist. It should be noted that in reality it is often more complex than that. For within the framework of centralized states, political communication and political measures occur at different times and on scales beyond the individual. For example, capitalists of all stripes do not hesitate at one time or another to use the springs of the extreme right, like Manuel Valls. But again, the National Socialist Nazi Party brought to power by the representative system had nothing socialist about it but turned out to be capitalist. Note in passing that the United States of North America made lucrative commercial contracts with them during the first part of the war, as did Joseph Stalin. Last example, the communist dictatorships ultimately proving to be state capitalisms, we can consider that they have largely misled the concept of soviets on a human scale experienced in the early days of the Russian revolution. Soviets, however, stemming from Karl Marxism but which Lenin hastened to recover and suppress in a centralized state. As far as Karl Marxism is concerned, I think that we must differentiate its criticism of capitalism, which is very effective, from the solutions it offers. That being said basically, to return to our subject, newspapers are for the most part capitalist propaganda, since they are owned by capitalists and follow their thinking, which has now traditionally become dominant. Thus titles such as Le Monde and Liberation are generally capitalist and therefore right-wing and center-wing respectively. The media such as Charlie Hebdo and I read that Marianne too are currently shifting towards the extreme right like Alain Soral before them. Current Values is far right. I think the richest 1% of humanity who own 99% of material wealth would much rather deal with dictatorships of all stripes than true socialists. I deduce from this that the dominant media, which tend to marginalize and reduce the socialist project, are trying at the same time to polarize the dissatisfied with capitalism on the far right, which is an opportunist and demagogic catchall without an avowed, if not fascist, social project. Finally after all the revolutions or almost the anarchists were betrayed and oppressed by the communists or the reformist socialists who recovered the revolutions to return finally to capitalism through a centralized state. When the revolutions were not recovered in this way by capitalism, the anarchists then in power were simply suppressed manu-militari. That’s it, it was a bit long but so unusual to hear that I allowed myself.

    1. What incoherent slices of a mind lost in the wacky and pathological world of left-wing thought.

       1. What arguments to support your criticism so constructed and enlightened from the previous comment!

17. The Washington Post in the United States is one of the most left wing newspapers in the country. No republican would ever read it. You might want to change is designation here as right, as it not correct. They are more left than the NYtimes.

18. Goodnight all. As a response to Yoann about the AFP, I suggest that he read The AFP Black Book written by Jean ROBIN. Supporting factual and verifiable arguments, it demonstrates the blatant left-wing bias of this public pharmacy (left & public sector = pleonasm in France) yet financed by all taxpayers therefore not 100% gauchos in the heap !

19. neutral, objective press these days is almost impossible to find. It is enough to see the difference between Courrier international and Le Monde diplomatique on international subjects. CI always offers foreign titles on the left which are for globalism, against those who want a referendum for independence (Brexit, Catalonia…): El Pais, The Guardian, La Repubblica. When the question is in one, all the articles point in the same direction, except for a very small one, to make us believe that they are in the minority. I subscribed to CI when I was young, I recently bought a few issues, it’s really over for me… Even p 5 Contreverse offers a subject with an article for and another against. But they put the one against on the left, so it’s their opinion that they impose first since we read from left to right, and we don’t say against or for. Le Monde Diplomatique is supposed to be right on the left, but strangely when I read it, I don’t feel any bias. For example on Trump or Russia, the journalist does his job, he reports the facts, the testimonies and then that’s it. The downside is that it’s monthly, so it’s analytical, in-depth, not pure news.

20. Can you clean all this spam please?

21. Hello, I would like to know the political tendency of the newspaper (disappeared) the Quotidien de Paris. Is he left or right? THANKS

22. Le Figaro is extreme right. The management of their forum is proof of this. They only publish messages that support an extremist ideology with hateful tendencies against foreigners.

23. Auguet, the news channels seek above all to attract the masses, so they feed on all provocative = attractive sources… Why organize a big plot when there are already all the elements provided by Mr. Fillon to buzz? This is also why Le Pen makes less noise, because forgetting the laws is more common in his family. If you want a neutral source, you just have to choose two different political diaries (eg Le Monde Les Echos), because it is impossible not to be subjective.

24. Personally, I read the dispatches directly on the AFP site. For true information that seems independent to me. What do you think ?

25. Hello, I am scandalized by the comments of the critics on the tv channels, with regard to the FILLON affair, we hear well, the sound of destabilization, it is obvious, something is happening in the space of the info, and the choice of partisan words of the speakers, it’s more a demolition company than news channels

26. Hihi, it’s funny in the comments how everyone distorts according to their own convictions while appearing neutral – except for the very legit person who calls himself left-wing green – like me, moreover, I’ll specify right away 🙂 To be complete would require each commentator to indicate where they are writing from (their own orientation) and the lines that define each category. I really hallucinate to hear that the Express would be on the left, for example. If I stick to the covers (it is found in all doctors between the Fig Mag and the Point) and to Barbier’s interventions, it is a very clearly right-wing (economic orthodoxy) and conservative title. Personally, my main line of demarcation is: eco-orthodox or heterodox. Because we find titles that are socially left but economically orthodox (and therefore, from a less point of view, not left). Example: Libé, to which I subscribed, and whose treatment of the previous presidential election disgusted me to such an extent that he was pro-Holland, whereas at the time there was already reason to be doubtful as to the speech of the Bourget. (even if we didn’t think it would go so far) In short, interesting and necessarily subjective work of course. In any case, I have relatively lost hope that there will be a truly progressive mass media that allows citizens to know the ins and outs of eco policies and gives an overview of the choices that are really possible. We can clearly see this with the current campaign. That said, if it could exist, I would be really interested in finding a REALLY neutral media that presents the main points of view in a reasoned way and indicates for each point of view the prerequisites / pre-suppositions etc. Well, that would be too much work, it will probably never exist.

27. In Spain there is a left-wing protest newspaper. It is an independent cooperative, known at national level. The newspaper is called La Marea. Here is their site http://www.lamarea.com/ There is also a leftist weekly newspaper, similar to Charlie Hebdo, called El Jueves, (la revista que sale los miércoles)

28. How can one want to integrate science po and be so blind? The list of your right or left newspapers is absolutely neither reliable nor honest. Finally, you seem sincere, but you have butter in your eyes. The American newspapers for example that you classify on the right are all on the left. As for the Express, I subscribe to it and it’s a weekly that spreads leftist thinking widely on absolutely all current issues. The Point is not on the right either. Current Values is only on the right, and not on the far right. By thus twisting the truth, what you are going to do, and it is clearly your intention, is to marginalize anyone who thinks on the right, by pushing your leftist point of view as the only morally acceptable one (since in a list examining the beliefs of the newspapers for the attention of the students of the cream of France, you are clearly off the mark), all that you are going to do by denying the facts and denying your opponents the right to exist for what they are, you will harden the far right and pick up a dictator or dictator. And you will not have stolen it, you who are neither really democrats nor lovers of facts and truth. Yuck your stupid list, I’ll look elsewhere.

29. Le figaro: Liberal right JDD: Right Le Point: Right Current values: Conservative right, see far right Marianne: Center Nouvel Obs: Left caviar…like L’Express Liberation: Left Le Monde: Left Humanity: Far left

30. the far right figaro

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