''Le Monde diplomatique'' (meaning "The Diplomatic World" in French) is a French monthly

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...

offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs. The publication is owned by Le Monde diplomatique SA, a

subsidiary company A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company (law), company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company ...

of ''

Le Monde ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...

'' which grants it complete editorial autonomy. Worldwide there were 71 editions in 26 other languages (including 38 in print for a total of about 2.2 million copies and 33 electronic editions).

History

1954–1989

''Le Monde diplomatique'' was founded in 1954 by

Hubert Beuve-Méry Hubert Beuve-Méry (5 January 1902 in Paris – 6 August 1989 in Fontainebleau) was a French journalist and newspaper editor. Before the Second World War, he was associated with the Vichy regime until December 1942, when he joined the Resista ...

, founder and director of ''

'', the French

newspaper of record A newspaper of record is a major national newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative and independent; they are thus "newspapers of record by reputation" and include some of the o ...

. Subtitled the "organ of diplomatic circles and of large international organisations," 5,000 copies were distributed, comprising eight pages, dedicated to

foreign policy A State (polity), state's foreign policy or external policy (as opposed to internal or domestic policy) is its objectives and activities in relation to its interactions with other states, unions, and other political entities, whether bilaterall ...

and

geopolitics Geopolitics (from Greek γῆ ''gê'' "earth, land" and πολιτική ''politikḗ'' "politics") is the study of the effects of Earth's geography (human and physical) on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually refers to ...

. Its first

editor in chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

, François Honti, developed the newspaper as a scholarly reference journal. Honti attentively followed the birth of the

Non-Aligned Movement The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a forum of 120 countries that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. After the United Nations, it is the largest grouping of states worldwide. The movement originated in the aftermath o ...

, created out of the 1955 Bandung Conference, and the issues of the "

Third World The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...

". Claude Julien became the newspaper's second editor in January 1973. At that time, the circulation of ''Le Monde diplomatique'' had jumped from 5,000 to 50,000 copies, and would reach, with Micheline Paulet, 120,000 in under 20 years.Numbers given i
"Le Monde diplomatique depuis 1954..."
''Les Amis du Monde diplomatique'', 1901 law association, 26 September 2006 Without renouncing its "

Third-worldism Third-Worldism is a political concept and ideology that emerged in the late 1940s or early 1950s during the Cold War and tried to generate unity among the nations that did not want to take sides between the United States and the Soviet Union. The ...

" position, it extended the treatment of its subjects, concentrating on international

economic An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...

and

monetary Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as ...

problems, strategic relations, the

Middle-East conflict This is a list of modern conflicts in the Middle East ensuing in the geographic and political region known as the Middle East. The "Middle East" is traditionally defined as the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia), Levant, and Egypt and neighboring ...

, etc. One of the contributors was

Samir Frangieh Samir Frangieh (4 December 1945 – 11 April 2017) was a Lebanese politician and a leftist intellectual. He was a member of the Lebanese Parliament. He was from the Frangieh family, one of the well-known political families of Lebanon. Early li ...

, a leftist Lebanese journalist. ''Le Monde diplomatique'' took an independent stance, criticising both the neoliberal ideology of the left and conservative policies represented by UK Prime Minister

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...

and US President

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

in the 1980s.

1989–present

After the November 1989 Fall of the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...

following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the 1990-1991

Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...

, the newspaper began to criticise what it described as an "American crusade".

Ignacio Ramonet Ignacio Ramonet Miguez (born 5 May 1943) is a Spanish academic, journalist and writer who has been based in Paris for much of his career. After becoming first known for writing on film and media, he became editor-in-chief of ''Le Monde diplomatiq ...

was elected director or editor-in-chief in January 1991, serving until 2008. Under his leadership, ''Le Monde diplomatique'' analysed the post-

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...

world, paying specific attention to "ethnic" conflicts that arose in this period: the wars in former Yugoslavia, the 1994

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu ...

, the conflicts in the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...

, etc., as well as to the new

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

. Ramonet has also published books about the media and their relationship to national societies. As noted by François Cusset, French universities have not developed an interdisciplinary approach to media studies. He notes that leftist journals including ''Le Monde Diplomatique'' have had an editorial approach that is committed to "critique of dominant media", both in terms of their roles in setting agendas and in enjoying status perks.François Cusset, "Media Studies: A French Blind Spot"
''InMedia'', 1/2012; accessed 01 October 2018 Both Ramonet and his successor, Serge Halimi, published books that critiqued the media from outside academic circles.Serge Halimi and Christine Larrazet, "At the Crossroads of Media, Media Critique, and the Critique of Media critics – An Interview with Serge Halimi, Editor-in-Chief of 'Le Monde Diplomatique' "
''InMedia'', 2/2012 (Interview 25 July 2012); accessed 01 October 2018 The newspaper established financial and editorial independence from ''Le Monde'' in 1996, forming its own company. ''Le Monde'' owns 51%; the Friends of Le Monde diplomatique and Gunter Holzmann Association, comprising the paper’s staff, together own 49%. In an editorial in January 1995,

coined the term "

pensée unique "''Pensée unique''" ( French for "single thought") is a pejorative expression for mainstream ideological conformism of any kind, almost always opposed to that of the speaker. Originally, it is a French expression and referred to claims that neo ...

" ("single thought") to describe the supremacy of the neoliberal

ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied pri ...

. The newspaper supported the November–December 1995 general strike in France against Prime minister

Alain Juppé Alain Marie Juppé (; born 15 August 1945) is a French politician. A member of The Republicans, he was Prime Minister of France from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac, during which period he faced major strikes that paralysed the coun ...

's ( RPR) plan to cut

pensions A pension (, from Latin ''pensiō'', "payment") is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments ...

. Three years later, after a proposal in a 1997 editorial by Ramonet, ''Le Monde diplomatique'' took a founding role in the creation of

ATTAC The Association pour la Taxation des Transactions financières et pour l'Action Citoyenne (''Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions and Citizen's Action'', ATTAC) is an activist organisation originally created to promote the e ...

, an

alter-globalisation Alter-globalization (also known as alternative globalization or alter-mundialization—from the French alter- mondialisation—and overlapping with the global justice movement) is a social movement whose proponents support global cooperation and ...

NGO A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...

. It was founded to advocate the

Tobin tax A Tobin tax was originally defined as a tax on all spot conversions of one currency into another. It was suggested by James Tobin, an economist who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Tobin's tax was originally intended to penali ...

, and chapters have been started throughout the world. It now supports a variety of left-wing causes. The newspaper also took an important role in the organisation of the 2001

Porto Alegre Porto Alegre (, , Brazilian ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Its population of 1,488,252 inhabitants (2020) makes it the List of largest cities in Brazil, twelfth most populous city in the country ...

World Social Forum The World Social Forum (WSF, pt, Fórum Social Mundial ) is an annual meeting of civil society organizations, first held in Brazil, which offers a self-conscious effort to develop an alternative future through the championing of counter-hegemoni ...

. After the Second Gulf War, started in 2003 under the

George W. Bush administration George W. Bush's tenure as the 43rd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2001, and ended on January 20, 2009. Bush, a Republican from Texas, took office following a narrow victory over Democratic ...

, ''Le Monde diplomatique'' continued to criticise the US policy of "violent intervention" in the Middle East and the

neoconservative Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and count ...

project to "reshape" the so-called "

Greater Middle East The Greater Middle East, is a political term, introduced in March 2004 in a paper by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as part of the U.S. administration's preparatory work for the Group of Eight summit of June 2004, denoting a v ...

" region. Ramonet devoted considerable space to reporting on

Hugo Chávez Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician who was president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, except for a brief period in 2002. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republ ...

, with whom he was said to have developed a close relationship, and his

Bolivarian Revolution The Bolivarian Revolution is a political process in Venezuela that was led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement and later the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The Bolivarian Revolution is ...

. Ramonet was succeeded by Serge Halimi who had a PhD in Political Science from the

University of California Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

. In 2018, LMD publishes a total of 37 print and online editions, in a total of 20 languages."About LMD"
''Le Monde diplomatique'', October 2018 The August 2017 issue of the monthly was not marketed in

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

. According to sources close to the distributor, the newspaper did not get permission to do so. Algerian authorities gave no explanation. The heads of the newspaper claim that it was "banned" from sale in the country because of a report by journalist Pierre Daum. He is best known for writing a book about the ''

harki ''Harki'' (adjective from the Arabic ''harka'', standard Arabic ''haraka'' حركة, "war party" or "movement", i.e., a group of volunteers, especially soldiers) is the generic term for native Muslim Algerian who served as auxiliaries in the F ...

s'' who stayed in Algeria after

Independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...

, and about the difficult social and economic situation of some

young Algerians The Young Algerians (french: Jeunes Algériens) were a political group established in French Algeria in 1907. They were assimilationists, meaning that they wanted Algerian society to integrate with French colonial society. As such, they called for ...

''Le Monde diplomatique'' SA

André Fontaine, the director of ''Le Monde'', signed a 1989 convention with Claude Julien which guaranteed the monthly's autonomy. But it gained complete statutory, economic and financial independence in 1996 with the creation of ''Le Monde diplomatique SA''. With a donation from Günter Holzmann, a German

antifascist Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were ...

exiled before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

to Bolivia, the monthly's employees acquired approximately one-quarter of the

capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...

, while ''Les Amis du Monde diplomatique'', a 1901 Law association of readers, bought another quarter. Thus, since the end of 2000, the newspaper's employees and readers retain 49% of ''Le Monde diplomatique SAs capital, largely above the control stock necessary to control the direction and editorial line of the ''Monde diplo''. The remaining 51% is owned by ''Le Monde''.

Controversies

Criticism

Jean-Marie Colombani Jean-Marie Colombani (born 7 July 1948 in Dakar, Senegal) is a French journalist, and was the editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper ''Le Monde'' from 1994 until 2007. Biography Educated at Panthéon-Assas University and Science-Po, he is the ...

, former editor of the daily ''Le Monde'', was attributed by ''Le Monde diplomatique''s former director general

Bernard Cassen Bernard Cassen (born 2 November 1937 in Paris) is a French journalist. Career He is a founder of ATTAC The Association pour la Taxation des Transactions financières et pour l'Action Citoyenne (''Association for the Taxation of financial ...

as saying: "''Le Monde diplomatique'' is a journal of opinion; ''Le Monde'' is a journal of opinions."

9/11 conspiracy theories

The

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

version of the July 2006 ''Le Monde diplomatique'' sparked interest when the editors ran, on their own initiative, a three page main story on the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

and summarised the various types of

9/11 conspiracy theories 9/11 conspiracy theory, conspiracy theories attribute the preparation and execution of the September 11 attacks against the United States to parties other than, or in addition to, al-Qaeda. These include the theory that high-level government ...

(which were not specifically endorsed by the newspaper, only reviewed). In December 2006, the French version published an article by Alexander Cockburn, co-editor of ''

CounterPunch ''CounterPunch'' is a left-wing online magazine. Content includes a free section published five days a week as well as a subscriber-only area called CounterPunch+, where original articles are published weekly. ''CounterPunch'' is based in the Unit ...

'', which strongly criticised the endorsement of conspiracy theories by the US left-wing, alleging that it was a sign of "theoretical emptiness." The Norwegian ''Le Monde diplomatique'', did again however mark its difference from the mother edition by allowing

David Ray Griffin David Ray Griffin (August 8, 1939 – November 26, 2022) was an American professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.Sources describing David Ray Griffin as a "conspiracy theorist", "conspiracist", "conspirac ...

's response to Cockburn to be published in their March 2007 issue.

Advertising

Although ''Le Monde diplomatique'' publishes few

advertisements Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

in order to retain its editorial independence, it has sometimes been criticised for the quantity and nature of the published advertisements In November and December 2003, two-page advertisements by IBM and a car manufacturer were placed. The issues of February and March 2004 contained

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

in a "social" atmosphere with a picture of children, which led to agitation.

Meat Atlas

''Le Monde diplomatique'' co-publishes the ''

Meat Atlas ''Meat Atlas'' () is an annual report, published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and Friends of the Earth Europe, on the methods and impact of industrial animal agriculture and the meat industry.Damien McGuinness"'Meat Atlas' charts a changing w ...

'', which is an annual report on meat production and consumption.Heinrich Böll Foundation, Meat Altas
downloa
Meat Atlas
as pdf

Overseas

The ''Friends of Le Monde diplomatique'' are a

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

-based society that promotes th
English edition
It organises regular talks at The Gallery in

Cowcross Street Cowcross Street is a street in London. It runs east–west, from St John Street in the east, to Farringdon Road in the west. Farringdon Station is on the corner of Cowcross Street and Turnmill Street. The Castle is a public house opposite F ...

, Farringdon.

References

External links

*
French edition
and a
Exact Editions
with trial issue * The French edition is accessibl
from 1954 to 1977
in Gallica, the digital library of the BnF {{DEFAULTSORT:Monde Diplomatique 1954 establishments in France Alter-globalization Monthly newspapers Multilingual news services Newspapers published in Paris Publications established in 1954 Socialist newspapers