A big publicity stunt at little cost. Unsurprisingly, the advertising campaign proposed by the publishing house Fayard, a subsidiary of Hachette Livre, in favor of the next book by the president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, will not be featured in French stations. Mediatransports, the company which manages the advertising billboards in SNCF stations and the Paris metro, received the visual of the campaign before making a decision on Monday October 28. Fayard wanted to display the cover of the book in 4 x 3 meters – a portrait of the far-right politician crossed out with the title of the work, What I’m looking for. Applying its general conditions of sale to the letter, the agency rejected this proposal which came from a subsidiary of the number one French publishing company, now owned by billionaire Vincent Bolloré.
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“We considered that this campaign had a political character, to the extent that Jordan Bardella is a European deputy and president of the National Rally”, we explain at Mediatransports. The title of the work shows, according to the management, that it is not only an autobiographical story. However, the company is “bound to ensure a principle of political and religious neutrality, due to its public service missions”we specify from the same source.
SUD-Rail had preemptively opposed such a massive poster campaign project, envisaged in sixty-seven stations in Paris and Ile-de-France and forty-three large stations in other regions, between the 25 November and December 17. In mid-October, the union recalled that the far-right party “was created by the Waffen-SS, collaborators of the Vichy regime and members of the OAS [Organisation armée secrète, pro-Algérie française ] ».
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For his part, Mr. Bardella, whose book is due to be released on November 9 with a large print run (150,000 copies), expressed his “deep indignation” and asked SNCF – owner with RATP of Mediatransports – to “return to this unacceptable act of censorship, which undermines its duty of neutrality.” However, other publishing houses which publish political works never offer such poster campaigns, knowing full well that they will not comply with the company’s general conditions of sale, explains Mediatransports. Fayard still tried his luck when the project was going to be rejected, making noise in the process.
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