The Huffington Post France

The French branch of the Huffington Post has three main shareholders. The principal one is an American group Verizon, a major actor of the global communication stage. Aol Europe Holdings used to own 51 percent of the outlet’s capital. In May 2015, Verizon bought up Aol for around $4.5 billion and so gathered control over the French Huff Post.

Besides the American media giant, the French version of Arianna Huffington’s web site belongs also to Le Monde (34 percent of shares), the latter itself being a property of Groupe Le Monde.

Arianna Huffington co-created her American media group in 2005, and in 2012 its French subsidiary appeared. The pure player is highly popular among net surfers (12,385,148 views in September 2015), which makes it an indispensable actor of the French online media stage.

All topics are dealt with in a liberal-libertarian manner. A large place is dedicated to the advocacy of LGBT and feminism. The editorial line is ruled by Anne Sinclair – a rich heiress, an ex-spouse of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (former managing director of IMF), a woman gravitating in highest political spheres of the Republic.

Co-founder of the news website that bears her surname, Arianna Huffington is a true archetype of an American-style executive lady. Born Arianna Stassinopoulos in Athens in 1950, she left her home for America in the early 1980s. There she met Michael Huffington, a wealthy businessman and Republican Party executive; they married and had two daughters. In 1997, the couple split. Michael Huffington then announced his bisexuality and became committed to defending LGBT rights.

Arianna has also written several books, including one that invites the reader to develop his "fourth instinct" and open themselves to the "self-knowledge". She merged gradually from the left wing of the Republican Party to positions that she qualifies as "progressive", such as defending women’s right to abortion. In 2004, she supported John Kerry and not George W. Bush, thus burying her past in the Republican Party.

A year later, she co-founds the Huffington Post with wealthy businessman Kenneth Lerer. Very rapidly, the website became a success. Despite having strongly criticized America Online in 2004 in her book Pigs at the Trough (which also mentions corruption), seven years later she sold her website to that corporation for an estimated $300-$315 million. Since 2011, the Huffington Post has been successfully exported to over 15 countries, France included.

When in 2011, Arianna Huffington decided to launch her project in France, she invited Anne Sinclair. The journalist, an heiress of wealthy art dealer Paul Rosenberg, has been the Huffington’s editorial director since its launch in France.

Known for her highly-publicized marriage to former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Anne Sinclair has always openly showed her left-wing point of view and attachments to her Jewish roots. This has sometimes caused equity problems. For example, she has always refused to invite Jean-Marie Le Pen to her shows. She stated in 1990: "We must admit that Le Pen is not a politician like any other, he has only hate not ideas."

According to ojim.fr website, Florence Belkacem, at that time a journalist at TF1, has accused Anne Sinclair of trying to exclude her from the TV channel. Why? Because of a TV show hosted by the journalist. Belkacem once asked the President of the National Front to observe a minute of silence for the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Anne Sinclair considered this request to be insulting to Jewish people.

The journalist is part of all circles close to the highest spheres of the French Republic. She is member of the Siècle, has received a B’nai B’rith medal and is part of the Honorary Committee of the circle Léon Blum.

Last May, the Huffington Post organized a special master class. The star of the event was Manuel Valls, the French prime minister. At the microphone, the Matignon tenant announced the creation of a private foundation in charge of suppling "an army of the government’s community manager." To what objective? To establish a "counter-propaganda" outlet to counter to the jihadist influences on the web. Furthermore, the PM lashed out at the "complotisme" (belief in conspiracy theories) undermining the credibility of the state’s official communications.

He said: "We know that it is difficult for the authorities, for the government, for the adults, to address the young people concerned, while the jihadists are using the conspiracy theory precisely to discredit the official communication".

The Huffington Post gives an important place to the "complotisme," or "conspiracy theorists." The website has multiple articles and opinion columns on the subject. Mainly, it serves to denounce it. Some observers however express their concerns that the Huffington Post uses it only to hide a dissident point of view and to fight the government’s policy. However, there were no obstacles to the Huffington Post to associate its name to the conference that has seen the announcement of the new crusade against the "complotisme."

The Huffington Post has been pointed out by the association Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). This association drives a campaign in order to make Israel pay and thus fights against the Jewish state policy towards Palestine. The website created by Arianna Huffington has released an opinion column of a lawyer named Oudy Bloch in which he violently attacks the BDS campaign.

Willing to respond to this attack, Palestinian defenders have asked the website to publish their right of reply. But the editorial board has refused to fully publish the counter-attack of BDS. The terms used, such as "ethnic cleansing" and "incitement to genocide" have caused a problem. More surprisingly, the Huffington Post found that the response of the BDS was way too long, and insufficiently precise regarding the disputed parts.

Jean-Guy Greilsamer, a member of the BDS movement, then decided to publish the full right of response directly on the BDS website.