Sarkozy pledges €600m to newspapers

The French president Nicolas Sarkozy today announced €600m (£565m) in emergency aid for his country's troubled newspaper industry and declared that every 18-year-old in France would get a year's free subscription to the paper of their choice to boost reading habits.

The crisis-hit French press is among the least profitable in Europe, stifled by rigid communist print unions, a lack of kiosks selling papers and a declining readership far below that of the UK or Germany.

The public's trust in the media is at an all-time low in a climate where politicians rewrite their own interviews for publication and the president's powerful business friends, from construction to arms manufacturing, own several major papers or TV stations.

Sarkozy has been likened by his political opponents to Silvio Berlusconi for his recent moves to tighten state control of public TV.

But today he made no apology about turning his hand to print and online newspapers with a major speech instructing them to improve the content of their articles, bring in younger readers and transform business models in exchange for emergency aid worth €600m over the next three years.

He said the aid package was not an attack on press freedom. "I don't understand how anyone could doubt the legitimacy of the state in this process," he said, adding that without a good business plan, the free, independent press would disappear.

The French state gives €1.5bn in direct and indirect state aid to the press each year. Sarkozy likened the press to any other industry in need of aid, such as the automobile sector.

Sarkozy's measures included a year's free, state-subsidised newspaper subscription for all teenagers from their 18th birthday. He said: "The habit of reading a daily paper takes root at a very young age."

He extended tax breaks for investors in online journalism and said the state would double its advertising in print and online papers. Rules would be changed to allow investors outside Europe to take higher stakes in French titles.

Papers in France are sold almost exclusively in a limited number of kiosks or specialist shops and there is a lack of newsagents. Sarkozy said he would increase sales points, loosen rules and pump aid into distributing papers to readers' front doors.

The number one problem is the cost of printing in France, with printworks tightly controlled by the communist union, Le Livre, which has rigid hours and protections. Sarkozy said the state would support negotiations with printers' unions to reduce the costs by 30-40%.

Laurent Joffrin, the editor of the left-wing daily, the Libération, who has previously criticised Sarkozy for attempting to limit media freedom, said the measures announced made "good sense". But he said there was a lack of concrete detail on printworks negotiations.

Asked if it was strange that the president could lecture journalists on the quality of newspapers' content, Joffrin said: "It is bizarre, but this is France. Ten per cent of the press's turnover comes from state aid. It's OK to talk about quality of content, we all know about that. But it would be a problem if he told us what our content should be."

The circulation of all French national papers totals 8m, half that of the UK. The biggest daily seller in France is the sports paper L'Equipe. The regional press sell far more than the nationals.

In 1914, the French read far more newspapers than the British. But after the Liberation from Nazi occupation in 1944, when 90% of papers were banned mostly on the pretext of collaboration, the new titles were seen to be blighted by their obsession with politics, and their state-funding.

The press remained largely the preserve of the elite and as a result there is no popular press in France, or mass-market newspapers such as the Sun or Germany's Bild. General readership is low and declining. Weekly news magazines have filled the gap left by the lack of development in weekend and Sunday papers.

Sarkozy's measures were drawn from recommendations by media experts after four months of state-sponsored crisis talks on the newspaper industry.

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