Following the declining fortunes of the French Communist Party, one of the oldest surviving Communist daily newspapers in Europe — L’Humanite — recently announced that it had reached an agreement with private investors to bail out the troubled newspaper.
Founded by French Communist leader Jean Jaure (who was assassinated in 1914), the paper once had a daily circulation in excess of 400,000. As membership in the French Communist Party has declined from a high of 800,000 to less than 200,000, however, the circulation of L’Humanite fell to less than 50,000 and became a serious drain on party finances.
To prevent the newspaper from disappearing entirely, the paper entered an agreement to forge a deal with the devil — capitalists — and sold a stake to privately owned television channel TF1. Ironically TF1 is in turn owned by communications group Bouygues, which in turn is a division of Lagarde`re, a combination holding company of defense and media companies.
Only in France would weapons makers want to invest in a struggling Communist Party daily, and only in France would the daily agree.
Marxist daily sells stakes to private investors. Jo Johnson, Financial Times, May 18, 2001.