Hizbullah TV station ordered off air after series of shows targets Jews

Paris Letter: Three unrelated media stories are making headlines here: the banning of the Lebanese Hizbullah television station Al Manar (The Lighthouse); the entry of the former financier and aristocrat Edouard de Rothschild into the capital of the left-wing daily Libération and a power struggle at the top of France's newspaper of record, Le Monde.

I visited Al Manar soon after it was established in a basement in Beirut's southern suburbs in the early 1990s.

The station's raison d'être was to glorify attacks against Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon. When the Israelis finally withdrew in 2000, Hizbullah took the credit. They started a radio station and website and contracted with several satellite providers to beam their programmes across the Middle East, Europe and North America.

Al Manar's availability in France became an issue in November 2003 when the CRIF, the council representing Jewish institutions here, complained to the Prime Minister and the audiovisual council CSA about Al Shatat (The Diaspora), a 30- episode Syrian-made television series broadcast during the Muslim month of Ramadan.

The series dredged up old clichés about Jews. On his death bed, a character called Rothschild, after the French Jewish banking family, tells his children: "God honoured Jews by asking them to fulfil a mission: to dominate the world through money, learning, politics, crime, sex and any other means."

Bending to criticism, Al Manar began to clean up its act. A televised message saying "Jews, go home to Europe and the US; Palestine will be your grave" was stopped.

Last month, the CSA authorised it to be shown in France - on condition that Al Manar not violate French laws against stirring up hatred.

Then a guest on one of Al Manar's talk shows accused Zionists of spreading AIDS in Arab countries. French Jewish groups and the right-wing deputy Pierre Lellouche demanded that it be shut down.

The audiovisual council obliged on Monday evening and Arabsat, the Saudi-owned company which beams Al Manar from Tunisia to Europe, has until tonight to get the station off the air.

As Libération newspaper noted: "Afficionados of Lebanese Shia Islamism with a strong Iranian influence" are not numerous in France and no one knows how many people actually watch Al Manar.

Despite the banning, devoted viewers can still tune in to Hizbullah news; all they have to do is readjust their satellite dish and decoder to one of the station's other providers or call up its website.

Yet Mr Lellouche continues his campaign. Yesterday he called for the banning of the Iranian television station Al Alam.

Al Manar would doubtless claim the partial takeover by Edouard de Rothschild (of the family portrayed in the Al Shatat series) of one of France's four national daily newspapers is evidence of Jewish influence. But French commentary has focused on the contrast between Mr Rothschild's affluent background and the newspaper he is saving.

The son of Baron Guy de Rothschild, Edouard (47) had never shown an interest in the press until this month, when it was announced that he is injecting €20 million of develop- ment money into Libération. His main interest in life was race horses, of which he owns 20.

Under the agreement still being negotiated with Libé, Rothschild will become vice president of the newspaper's board. Rothschild, one commentator said, "risks being as out of place at Libé as a steelworker at [ the conservative newspaper] Le Figaro".

Libération was founded in the wake of the May 1968 revolution by Jean-Paul Sartre and the (then) Maoist editor, Serge July, who will remain chairman of the board until 2012.

Rothschild's money will initially give him a 37 per cent interest in the paper, which could increase to 49 per cent. The percentage owned by Libé's journalists will fall from 36.4 per cent to 19 per cent, but Roths- child promises they will retain the ability to block decisions.

With his easygoing manner and genial smile - not to mention the €20 million - Rothschild has been welcomed at Libé.

The mood is less happy across the Seine at Le Monde, whose editor-in-chief, Edwy Plenel, resigned on November 29th, saying he wanted "to return to the simple joys of journalism and writing".

A dead ringer for Charlie Chaplin, Plenel had run Le Monde in tandem with the paper's director, Jean-Marie Colombani, for the past nine years.

They always seemed an unlikely team. Plenel is still considered a "cultural Trotskyist" though he notes that he ceased being a Trot 25 years ago. Colombani is a capitalistic Christian Democrat.

It was a power struggle though - not ideology - which separated them. Plenel is believed to be biding his time until Colombani's term ends in 2007.

In the meantime, a reserved serious journalist called Gérard Courtois (his name means "courteous") replaced Plenel this week. Plenel often quoted the great French journalist Albert Londres, who said that the vocation of a reporter should be "to stick his pen in the wound".

He encouraged investigative reporting and sensational revelations. Courtois is expected to take the newspaper back to more traditional coverage.

Despite the most generous government subsidies in Europe, French newspapers are in dire straits. Readership is plummeting; Le Monde lost 10.2 per cent of its readers between January and October and will finish the year with a record deficit of €35 million.

No one here seems shocked that three-quarters of the French press is now owned by the arms manufacturers Arnaud Lagardère and Serge Dassault. Dassault, who is also a right-wing senator, took over Le Figaro last May.