Antidote to Management Spin: SUD Trade Union Publishes Full Text of AFP’s Statutes in English

Recent media leaks have shown that chief executive Emmanuel Hoog sees PR spin as the best way to push through an unwanted reform of Agence France-Presse’s statutes, to influence not only the general public and French MPs but also his own staff (see https://www.sos-afp.org/en/news/hoog-censure-motion-strike ).

Called on by the Works Committee to explain his bizarre dealings with “Media9”, a PR outfit whose boss just happens to be a former close aide to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, M. Hoog denied that he had signed a wide-ranging agreement with them - but did admit that his team had used them to acquire a mailing-list of international journalists!


Well that should certainly come in handy, as SUD-AFP is today publishing a set of documents in English that M. Hoog and his PR-friendly management team will no doubt be rushing to publicise!

Information pack on plans to change AFP’s statutes

• First translation ever of the 1957 foundation document. Available at https://www.sos-afp.org/en/statutes/text. A fully-annotated printable version is available on the same page.

In addition to the act of parliament that laid down AFP’s statutes over half a century ago - and that is still doing just fine today, thank you - we offer:

• An annotated English version of the "statement of aims" of the draft bill currently before the French parliament;
• A similarly annotated summary of the changes proposed in the bill;

• The text of an "open letter" to French MPs in protest at the plan;
• The text of the joint-union petition launched to defend AFP from an earlier attack in 2008 - and which is still very relevant today.

Anyone wishing to get a clearer idea of what exactly is going on at one of the world’s main international news agencies is invited to download these documents from the "SOS-AFP" web site at https://www.sos-afp.org/en/statutes/legendre-draft-law.

Spinmeister Hoog is fond of empty talk about "public interest missions"; we prefer to actually produce "public interest documents". Isn’t that what AFP’s all about, M. Hoog?

SUD-AFP Union, Monday September 5, 2011