Courage, not fear

Dear Mr. CEO,

"Without taboos," as you suggested, we are responding to your dark video message that paints a very alarming picture of the Agency’s financial situation that you present as being due solely to external factors.

Without providing details, you asserted that immediate savings of €2 million are needed from the 2025 budget, followed by €10-12 million next year. This announcement came just before the start of the annual wage talks (NAO) and at a time when the renegotiation of journalists’ share of neighboring rights is getting to the heart of the matter.

We consider your message to be fundamentally dishonest in that, under the pretext of transparency, you warned of an impending commercial disaster without offering any measures to avoid it. This was apparently done to instill fear and make people realize that staff alone will have to pay the price.

You closed doors before opening them, by refusing to ask for additional support from the French state. Yet it is clear that in this era when disinformation is exploding, upsetting the democratic balance in numerous countries including France, the Agency has a major role to play in verification, expertise, cross-checking sources... In other words, journalistic work.

This seemed to be absent from your thinking, as if the product of our work was widgets.

Choices, not just external factors

Meanwhile you seemed to absolve yourself of any reflection on your strategic choices and their consequences. Apparently, Meta is the main problem for balancing next year’s budget. How could the loss of a single client impact us so much when you’ve been aware this could happen for several years? Was there no plan B ready?

You must account for how certain services were developed, the market research that was carried out and the commercial strategy deployed in relation to these new customers.

Generally speaking, it is clear our relationships and our problems with tech giants – particularly the fight for neighboring rights – cannot be resolved simply at our level, or even in association with our colleagues in the French press. As you point out, we are not up to the task.

This is a political, legal, and commercial battle. A battle for which you, as CEO, must seek out allies in the government and parliament, as you did a few years ago over neighboring rights. At a time when the media sector is weakened by the emergence of AI and the proliferation of authoritarian regimes, you must do this again.

We shouldn’t forget that amidst this economic turmoil that AFP embodies and defends a fundamental principle of our democracy: freedom of information. This principle, which you defend everywhere outside AFP’s walls, and which seems to disappear when you step inside HQ, is expensive because it is as fragile as it is precious. Protecting democracy is a battle, so now is not the time for fear but for leadership and courage.

This is not the time to scale back.

Paris, July 1, 2025

SUD-AFP (Solidarity-Unity-Democracy)