The World

 

I love Le Monde.  There is nothing better than sitting in a café, sipping an espresso and reading the paper.  Sometimes I feel like I should be wearing a beret and smoking a Gauloises cigarette.
 

Le Monde is France’s leading newspaper and is very intelligently written.  It is known less for its scoops and more for its analysis.  The front page editorial is always interesting.

For years I have thought of Le Monde as a lefty newspaper, given the articles it prints and its editorial slant.  But I’ve been surprised on this trip about how far it has moved to the right, especially on economic matters.  It is always telling the government to move farther and faster to liberalize the French economy.

When I mentioned this to my friend Christian, he told me something I didn't know.  He said that unlike Figaro (always right wing) or Liberation (always left wing), Le Monde tends to lean against the party in power.  So during the right wing Sarkozy government of 2007-12, it leaned left.  Now that the socialists are in power, it leans right.

Because Le Monde is so widely read and so influential, it tries to counterbalance the government.  That’s one of the things that makes it so interesting, because it is not dogmatic.  I don’t read Figaro or Liberation because they are boring - you always know what they are going to say and it’s usually a knee-jerk reaction to that day’s events.  But Le Monde is much more thoughtful, and often surprising.

We don’t have anything like it in the US.  Our two leading papers - the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal - lean left and right respectively.  Their news coverage is pretty straight and then they make their opinions known on the editorial pages.  But those opinions are usually boring because they are so predictable and often knee-jerk.

I guess that means I’ll have to keep reading Le Monde when I get home.  I wonder where I can find a good beret in Menlo Park?

KVS