Le Monde
Le Monde has often broken major scandals, for instance, by directly implicating President François Mitterrand in the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand.[6] Le Monde was founded by Hubert Beuve-Méry at the request of Charles de Gaulle (as Chairman of the Provisional Government of the French Republic) on 19 December 1944, shortly after the Liberation of Paris from Nazism, and has published continuously since its first edition.In the 1990s and 2000s, La Vie-Le Monde Group expanded under editor Jean-Marie Colombani with a number of acquisitions; however, its profitability was not sufficient to cover the large debts it took on to fund this expansion, and it sought new investors in 2010 to keep the company from bankruptcy.[7] Le Monde was founded in 1944,[8][9] at the request of General Charles de Gaulle, after the German army had been driven from Paris during World War II.[11] In December 2006, on the 60th anniversary of its publishing début,[citation needed] Le Monde moved into new headquarters in Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui, 13th arrondissement of Paris.The building's façade has an enormous fresco adorned by doves (drawn by Plantu) flying towards Victor Hugo, symbolising freedom of the press.[20][21] In November 2023, Le Monde joined with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Paper Trail Media [de] and 69 media partners including Distributed Denial of Secrets and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and more than 270 journalists in 55 countries and territories[22][23] to produce the 'Cyprus Confidential' report on the financial network which supports the regime of Vladimir Putin, mostly with connections to Cyprus, and showed Cyprus to have strong links with high-up figures in the Kremlin, some of whom have been sanctioned.[24][25] Government officials including Cyprus president Nikos Christodoulides[26] and European lawmakers[27] began responding to the investigation's findings in less than 24 hours,[28] calling for reforms and launching probes.[2][3] On January 20, 2025, Le Monde announced its withdrawal from the social network X (formerly Twitter), citing the "intensification of activism" by its owner Elon Musk and the "growing toxicity of discussions" on the platform[38].In 1981, Le Monde backed the election of socialist François Mitterrand, partly on the grounds that the alternation of the political party in government would be beneficial to the democratic character of the state.