The editorial director of La Provence will return to his duties on Monday, the daily announced on Sunday March 24. Aurélien Viers was fired on Friday due to a “headline” on Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Marseille, deemed “ambiguous” by the management of the newspaper, owned by the CMA CGM group, headed by Rodolphe Saadé.
“The management of La Provence is pleased to announce an agreement with Aurélien Viers, editorial director” whose “withdrawal of the layoff (…) was decided after a working meeting with Gabriel d’Harcourt, general director », Specifies the title in a press release.
The journalists of the regional daily, who had denounced “inadmissible editorial interference”, have been on strike since Friday and were supported by other colleagues including those from other titles owned by Franco-Lebanese billionaire Rodolphe Saadé.
“Many questions”
However, they are maintaining a rally planned for Monday morning in front of the newspaper’s headquarters in Marseille, because “many questions remain,” an elected official from the National Union of Journalists (SNJ) in La Provence told Agence France-Presse. “We recall that the “one” invoked for the layoff was not problematic,” he added.
The crisis started with the announcement of the dismissal of Mr. Viers for the front page of the regional daily on Thursday, crossed out with the title “[Emmanuel Macron] is gone and we are still here…”, repeating the words from a resident of the impoverished town of La Castellane, in Marseille, interviewed on the inside page.
The title overlooks a photo showing two people, from behind, watching a police officer pass on patrol in this city of the second largest city in France, where the President of the Republic came by surprise on Tuesday to announce an operation “XXL net square”, which he presented as being “unprecedented” in the fight against drug trafficking.
This quote “was used in the front page, without being explicitly sourced. This error in the composition of the front page is problematic, with some readers believing that this quote came from drug traffickers. She is at the origin of the call to order from the editorial director,” said the management in its press release, which also apologizes to readers for the fact that the newspaper has no publication on Saturday or Sunday. , nor Monday.
