Alain Sanders was a mercenary in the Belgian Congo long before he became a journalist at the Parisian daily Pr?sent, and he still sees himself as a lonely warrior. The red-haired, bearded reporter hero of France's extreme right party, the National Front, explained to me why he despises the mainstream press: "We denounce the lie of objective journalism. Choosing which facts to report is already expressing an opinion. We admit it. We say, 'We're expressing an opinion, and we're letting you know it.'"
 Indeed they are. Pr?sent hammers on the urban "violence and anarchy" caused by the immigrant "invasion," and on the corrupt politicians, occult Freemasons, and financiers who run the world - a mix many readers find "too intellectual," sighs Sanders. It's the sort of material you find in the American neo-Nazi weekly The Spotlight (a big fan of National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen). But there's a major difference: The Spotlight's followers are stuck on the American fringe, while reporters like Sanders helped the Front expand beyond its neo-fascist core and survive two decades of hostile mainstream news coverage to become a fast-rising political movement. It is now polling 40 percent or more in some elections, enough to control four cities in the south under France's voting system.

 Without the active help of true-believer media like Pr?sent, the Front might be dead: from its inception in 1972 until the mid-'80s, journalists handled the Front like the Los Angeles Times handled Democrats in the 1940s - by ignoring or ridiculing them. But in 1984 that tactic was sabotaged when President Fran?ois Mitterrand, a Socialist, allowed Le Pen access to state-owned TV networks. Mitterrand's announced reason was to respect the rights of expression and representation, but in fact he hoped that the Front would drag the mainstream right toward extremism (exactly as Pat Buchanan pulled the Republicans sharply rightward in '92), and thus to electoral defeat.

 Mitterrand's plan backfired. Le Pen's first national exposure helped give the Front its first mass audience and electoral successes. After 1987, when Le Pen was caught in anti-Semitic and racist speeches, he and his party were constantly attacked in the media, yet still thrived. This was partly due to rising unemployment and unending corruption scandals - and partly to the Front's own multiplying alternative media.

 Besides Pr?sent, media allied with the Front include a weekly newspaper, National Hebdo; an FM station, Radio Courtoisie; and scores of monthlies, quarterlies, pamphlets, books, and newsletters. Alongside national news and features spotlighting bygone Spanish fascists or Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Pr?sent and National Hebdo list cake-and-coffee parties for sympathizers in far-off provinces, helping to keep together what Le Pen calls "a great big family."
 These media aren't profitable; advertisers shun them and circulations hover in the low tens of thousands. National Hebdo seems to exist on party subsidies, while Pr?sent draws its backing from the Front's reactionary "traditionalist" Catholic wing. But they are a powerhouse mobilization tool. During a legislative campaign in the midst of a national transportation strike last winter, I watched as Radio Courtoisie put out an urgent call for campaign workers, and four dozen arrived in a distant Paris suburb by car pool within hours. "Few other parties in France could have done that," marveled Pascal Perrineau, director of the nonpartisan Center for the Study of French Political Life in Paris.

 Over the past year Sanders and company ceased to be the sole vehicle for the Front's message. As the party gains literally hundreds of local, regional, and European Parliament offices, its program is gradually becoming an obligatory subject for mainstream journalists. Even Le Monde, the movement's sworn enemy, now runs interviews with the Front's leaders. In the provinces, the Front is even bigger news. A reporter in the Loire valley told me, as he was covering the Front's county press conference: "We have the highest unemployment in the region - and when unemployment arrives, so do other problems [like crime]. The other parties deny the problems exist. The Front says, 'It's a crisis,' and public opinion says, 'They're telling us the truth.'"

 The Front's growing prominence is again posing the question of how reporters should cover a movement they dread. In Lyon, the dominant daily, Le Progr?s, accepts the Front as a feature of the landscape. "Their voters are readers of ours," said political correspondent Manuel da Fonseca.

 It remains to be seen how this media battle will affect the 1998 legislative elections, but up to this point, the Front has used the mainstream media better than the media have handled the Front. It is a lesson that American reporters covering radical grass-roots movements would do well to learn: we are not the only powers that be.

cjr  |  archive  |  resources  |  contact  |  search  |  subscribe