They believe they have been victims of an attack on freedom of expression. Éditions Fayard announced on Friday that they were taking legal action against the railway advertising agency Mediatransports, after its refusal of the poster campaign for Jordan Bardella's book.
“Éditions Fayard have today seized, via the company Hachette Livre and its advisors, Maîtres Sarah Saldmann and Christian Charrière-Bournazel, the Paris commercial court in order to assert their rights and to force the Mediatransports agency to execute its contract broadcast,” said the publisher of the president of the National Rally in a press release.
This book published on Saturday, and entitled “What I am looking for”, is the first by a leader of the National Rally to be published by a major publishing house. Mediatransports, which operates the advertising panels on behalf of the RATP and Gares et Connexions (a subsidiary of the SNCF), justified the termination of the contract by the nature of the book. The management indicated at the end of October that “the promotion of the work of a practicing politician” violated the “principle of neutrality”.
According to Fayard, “this constitutes a serious attack on freedom of expression. Other political figures, from all sides, have been able to benefit from poster campaigns, without suffering discrimination or unequal treatment.”
“The cover of Mr. Bardella's book, support of this communication campaign, does not contain any political position,” added the publishing house.
Fayard is a subsidiary of the French book number one, Hachette Livre, which belongs to Lagardère and therefore to Vivendi, the group of conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré.
This publishing house, one of the oldest in France still in activity, took over in June Lise Boëll, editor who made the far-right polemicist and journalist from Le Figaro Éric Zemmour a successful author in the 2010s.
