Sarkozy's tight circle of media friends

His company, LVMH, is the world's largest luxury goods producer, with brands ranging from Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton to the Sephora cosmetics stores. In other words, Les Échos reports regularly on just about everything Arnault controls.

He is in exclusive negotiations with the paper's present owner, the British press group Pearson Plc, and has reportedly offered ¤245 million ($336 million) for Les Échos. The paper's editorial staff has staged two one-day strikes to protest the potential sale and signed up hundreds of big-name political and civic leaders on a petition against a sale to Arnault's LVMH.

If his offer is accepted, newsroom employees fear, his ownership cannot help but have a chilling effect.

"France is a small country, and everything is centered in Paris," says Laurence Bagot, a senior writer at Les Échos. "So there's already the suspicion that everyone knows everyone. When you have a guy like Arnault in charge, it's not only difficult to write about him but it's also a small world."

Damaging story pulled last-minute

An incident last fall at one of Arnault's newspapers, La Tribune, fed those fears. With the presidential race heating up, the paper commissioned an opinion poll that found Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal inspired more confidence on economic questions than her rivals, including Sarkozy.

La Tribune prepared a front page headline to that effect, with the full story scheduled to run inside. But on the eve of publication, the chief editor killed the story. After staff protests, the poll results were mentioned in the next day's paper – but inside an unrelated story in the back of the paper.

Did Arnault intervene to suppress news that was unfavorable to his old friend? He declared recently that he never tells his employees what, and what not, to write.

For his part, Sarkozy has scoffed at the idea that he has benefited from his friendships with media barons – or vice versa. When his left-wing rivals accused him of manipulating the media during the presidential campaign, he responded by saying, "Who could believe such a thing when you see the antagonism that was whipped against my candidacy?"

Wary journalists see the situation differently and say the president's friends have sometimes interfered directly in editorial decisions at their publications. More insidious, they say, is the tendency of some reporters and editors to tiptoe around unflattering news about their bosses and their bosses' important friends.

Pearson, which also owns The Economist and The Financial Times, has responded to such concerns by drafting a proposed guarantee of editorial independence that would require LVMH to give journalists an oversight role.

The paper's editorial union has called the guarantees flimsy and has demanded, among other changes, a cast-iron veto over any new owner's appointment of top editors.

The newly formed coalition of French journalist unions, though, wants such guarantees written into law to create a wall between journalists and the influential people who own the media.

"It's like a rich man who buys a beautiful painting. You hope he will take care of it and not put out his cigarettes on the canvas," says Malye, the coalition president. "The one thing that Sarkozy can do to establish confidence and get rid of the questions around him, is to help modernize and protect the press."

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