The Right to Edit

A meddling owner is rebuffed

When the Franco-British grocery and newspaper baron Sir James Goldsmith bought the French weekly L'Express in 1977, he promised to leave editorial policy in the practiced hands of Editorial Director Philippe Grumbach whose center-right leanings contributed to the magazine's close ties to President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. But a year later, says Grumbach, when it looked as if a Socialist-Communist coalition might come to power (it did not), Goldsmith began shopping for an editor more sympathetic to the left. Grumbach was kicked upstairs into an executive job sans power, secretary or office space. He protested and was fired.

Grumbach sued, and last month a French court found that he could not be dismissed summarily for his politics. Citing France's work code and its unique clause de conscience, which allows journalists to resign with full severance benefits if a politically hostile owner takes over their publication, the judges awarded Grumbach some $500,000 in back pay and indemnities. The decision sets no precedent under French law, but the size of the award is seen by some journalists as a sign that the courts may be on their side in ideological disputes caused by ownership changes. That is a timely assurance now that many of the highly political journals launched after France's liberation in 1944 are being sold by their aging founders.

As Goldsmith's lawyers were appealing the decision, Grumbach left on an extended skiing vacation. "I'm very optimistic," he says of his employment prospects. He might, however, have trouble finding a publisher who wants him. Though the Grumbach case is a matter of public record, no French newspaper or magazine has mentioned it. Says Pierre Salinger, former L'Express writer and White House press secretary: "Publishers fear that knowledge of this case would give journalists too many dangerous ideas as to the extent of their rights." qed

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