Philippe Val

Last updated

Philippe Val
Philippe Val, France Inter (8513628892).jpg
Philippe Val (2013)
Born (1952-09-14) 14 September 1952 (age 71)
Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Occupations
  • Journalist
  • comedian
  • singer
Known forFont et Val comedy duo
Co-founder of Charlie Hebdo

Philippe Val (French pronunciation: [filipval] ; born 14 September 1952) [1] [2] is a French journalist, singer, and comedian. He was a co-founder of the second iteration of Charlie Hebdo in 1992, serving as the satirical political weekly's editor and director. [3] After leaving Charlie Hebdo in 2009, Val was director of the public radio channel France Inter until 2014. [4]

Contents

Biography

Val was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hautsde-Seine) to a butcher's father and a hairdressing mother, as the last of four siblings. [5] Val first became known as a member of the comedy duo Font et Val with Patrick Font from 1970 until 1996, and sometimes as a one-person show performer, with his dog "Jeff". [1] He is also a singer and pianist. At the turn of the 21st century, he performed with Emmanuel Binet on bass. His last album was called simply Philippe Val. [1]

Charlie Hebdo career

Val was briefly the editor of the satirical political weekly La Grosse Bertha in 1991, and appointed Cabu, Charb, Gébé, Peroni, and Tignous to his editiorial team. [3] After he was removed from his position in 1992, he helped re-launch Charlie Hebdo together with Bernard Maris, Xavier Pasquini, Albert Algoud, Olivier Cyran, Luz, and Riss. [3]

In 2004, following the death of Gébé, Val succeeded him as director of Charlie Hebdo, while still holding his position as editor. Several contributors and journalists, including Olivier Cyran, Mona Chollet, and Philippe Corcuff protested against Val's ideas and left the magazine. [3] Val’s editorship of Charlie Hebdo was influenced by three convictions: philo-Semitism, anti-sociologisme, and an aversion to Islam due to the assumption that anti-Semitism is intrinsic to Arab identity and Islam. [3] As editorial director, Val chose to publish the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons in late 2005. As a result of publishing the cartoons, Charlie Hebdo was taken to court for inciting hatred; in 2007 it was acquitted of those charges. [6] Val co-signed a petition, "le manifeste des 12", together with Bernard-Henri Lévy, Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin and eight others, which denounced the dangers of Islamist ideology, calling it a "new totalitarianism". [3]

In 2008, Val fired cartoonist Siné from the magazine for an alleged antisemitic comment in one of his columns. [7] However, in December 2010, Siné won a 40,000-euro court judgment against Charlie Hebdo for wrongful termination. [8] In 2009, Val resigned from Charlie Hebdo after being appointed director of France Inter. [3]

Val has been described as a counter-jihad activist by Farid Hafez, who has stated that he "is seen as a kind of martyr for his activism in the fight against Islamisation", [9] with Gates of Vienna listing him as a "victim of the 'repression of the counter-jihad movement'". [10]

Later activities

Val served as the director of public radio channel France Inter until 2014. [4]

In April 2018, Val drafted a manifesto "against the new anti-Semitism", which was signed by 250 personalities in France including Nicolas Sarkozy, Manuel Valls, Jack Lang, Julia Kristeva, and Gérard Depardieu, condemning the "silent ethnic cleansing" of Jews by Muslims in certain parts of France. [3] [9]

Val joined radio station Europe 1 as a weekly columnist in 2021. [4]

Publications

Related Research Articles

Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical weekly magazine, featuring cartoons, reports, polemics, and jokes. The publication has been described as anti-racist, sceptical, secular, libertarian and within the tradition of left-wing radicalism, publishing articles about the far-right, religion, politics and culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Professeur Choron</span> French humorist (1929– 2005)

Georget Bernier, more commonly known as Professeur Choron, was a French humorist and founder of Hara Kiri magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siné</span> French cartoonist

Maurice Albert Sinet, known professionally as Siné, was a French political cartoonist. His work is noted for its anti-capitalism, anti-clericalism, anti-colonialism, antisemitism, and anarchism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline Fourest</span> French writer and journalist

Caroline Fourest, is a French feminist writer, film director, journalist, radio presenter at France Culture, and editor of the magazine ProChoix. She was also a columnist for Charlie Hebdo, for Le Monde until 14 July 2012, and she joined Marianne in 2016. She is regularly invited by journalists to bring her profound knowledge on all subjects but especially related to Muslims, feminism, Charlie Hebdo and Israel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julien Dray</span> French politician

Julien Dray is a French politician. He is a member of the French Socialist Party, member of the regional council of Île-de-France and was a member of the National Assembly of France between 1988 and 2012. He was a Trotskyist activist till 1981 and a cofounder with his friend Harlem Désir of SOS Racisme, of which he was vice president from 1984 to 1988.

The prix Guillaume Apollinaire is a French poetry prize first awarded in 1941. It was named in honour of French writer Guillaume Apollinaire. It annually recognizes a collection of poems for its originality and modernity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charb</span> French satirist and journalist

Stéphane Jean-Abel Michel Charbonnier, better known as Charb, was a French satirical caricaturist and journalist. He was assassinated during the Charlie Hebdo shooting on 7 January 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Maris</span> French economist, writer and journalist (1946–2015)

Bernard Henri Maris, also known as "Oncle Bernard", was a French economist, writer and journalist who was also a shareholder in Charlie Hebdo magazine. He was murdered on 7 January 2015, during the shooting at the headquarters of the magazine in Paris.

Philippe Lançon is a journalist working for the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, who was wounded in the terrorist attack perpetrated against that publication on 7 January 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege</span> 2015 Islamist terrorist attack in Paris

On 9 January 2015, Amedy Coulibaly, armed with a submachine gun, an assault rifle, and two Tokarev pistols, entered and attacked a Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes in Paris, France. There, Coulibaly murdered four Jewish hostages and held fifteen other hostages during a siege in which he demanded that the Kouachi brothers not be harmed. The siege ended when police stormed the supermarket, killing Coulibaly. The attack and hostage crisis occurred in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shooting two days earlier, and concurrently with the Dammartin-en-Goële hostage crisis in which the two Charlie Hebdo gunmen were cornered.

Olivier Muller-Cyran, better known as Olivier Cyran, is a German journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Malka</span>

Richard Malka is a French lawyer, comics writer and novelist. As lawyer Malka in 2007 successfully defended Charlie Hebdo editor Philippe Val against charges of racism following the magazine's publication of Mohammad caricatures. Other clients include Clearstream, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Caroline Fourest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zineb El Rhazoui</span> French journalist

Zineb El Rhazoui known mononymously as Zineb is a Moroccan-born French journalist. She was a columnist for the Paris-based satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo from 2011 to 2017, but was in Morocco during the Charlie Hebdo shooting on 7 January 2015.

La Grosse Bertha was a French weekly satirical magazine created in 1991 in opposition to the Gulf War. Its editor and publisher was Jean-Cyrille Godefroy and its first editor-in-chief was François Forcadell. The title of the magazine was an anti-militarist jibe; "Big Bertha" is the name of a massive piece of heavy artillery.

The Prix France Télévisions are annual literary awards in France. Since 1995, the national television broadcaster France Télévisions has awarded two prizes, for a novel and an essay. The judging panel consists of 15 television viewers chosen from across France, on the basis of their cover letters.

Sylvie Caster is a French journalist and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sigolène Vinson</span>

Sigolène Vinson is a former lawyer and actress who became a novelist and journalist. She is the legal correspondent of Charlie Hebdo, where she survived the shooting on 7 January 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philippe Vuillemin</span> French cartoonist

Philippe Vuillemin is a French cartoonist.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Val, Philippe (1952-....)". La Médiathèque (in French). Retrieved 15 June 2024.
  2. ↑ "Assignation en justice". Le Parisien (in French). 17 May 2009.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Neffati, Imen (August 2021). "Anti-sociologisme, Zionism, and Islamophobia in Philippe Val's Charlie Hebdo". French Cultural Studies. 32 (3): 280–95. doi: 10.1177/09571558211027041 . S2CID   236917009.
  4. 1 2 3 "Philippe Val, ex-patron de France Inter, rejoint Europe 1 comme éditorialiste". Ouest-France (in French). AFP. 9 September 2021.
  5. ↑ "Philippe Val, l'ami qui dérange". Le Parisien (in French). 17 May 2009.
  6. ↑ Leveque, Thierry (22 March 2007). "French court clears weekly in Mohammad cartoon row". Reuters. Retrieved 10 June 2013.
  7. ↑ Henry Samuel (27 January 2009). "French cartoonist Sine on trial on charges of anti-Semitism over Sarkozy jibe". The Daily Telegraph.
  8. ↑ "Le Tribunal de Grande Instance donne raison à Siné contre Charlie Hebdo". actuabd.com (in French). 11 December 2010.
  9. 1 2 Hafez, Farid (18 May 2018). "Controversial manifesto against "new anti-Semitism" in France: Cutting Suras to suit". Qantara.de.
  10. ↑ Hafez, Farid (May 2018). "The French Initiative to Change the Qur'an" (PDF). SETA Perspective. p. 4.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.