Étienne Mougeotte

Étienne Mougeotte (4 March 1940 – 7 October 2021) was a French journalist and media director. During his fifty-year career, he served as Vice-President of TF1 Group and was satellite director of TF1 from 1987 to 2007 alongside Patrick Le Lay. He directed the editorial staff at Le Figaro from 2008 to 2012 and was Director-General of Radio Classique from 2012 to 2018. From 2015 to 2020, he was President of , including the magazine Valeurs actuelles.

Biography Youth and studies Mougeotte was born in La Rochefoucauld on 4 March 1940, during the Phoney War. His father worked as an inspector for SNCF and his mother was a housewife in Charente. His father died when he was 18, which compelled his mother to start working. He notably covered the Six-Day War for France Inter. In 1987, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, which he recovered from, but left lasting effects on his voice.

Mougeotte also served as President of La Chaîne Info, the non-stop news channel of the TF1 Group, from 1994 to 2007. In 2006, he became Vice-President of France 24.

Later career Mougeotte left TF1 in 2007 to become a communications consultant. On 2 December 2007, he joined the team of interviewers on Le Grand Jury. In 2012, he took part in the group with supported re-election for President Nicolas Sarkozy. In July 2012, he left his post as editorial director of Le Figaro and was replaced by . That month, he briefly worked as a consultant for TVous.

On 12 December 2012, Mougeotte was appointed general manager of Radio Classique, a position he held until 1 March 2018. In 2015, with Iskandar Safa and Charles Villeneuve, he purchased Groupe Valmonde from Laboratoires Pierre Fabre, which the right-wing weekly magazine Valeurs contemporaine was a part of.

Political opinions In his youth, Mougeotte was firmly committed to the left and was briefly suspended from the ORTF for this reason. He broke from the left following the signing of the Programme commun in 1972 and became a supporter of President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. He was ousted from Europe 1 following the victory of François Mitterrand in 1981. During his time as Vice-President of TF1, the channel leaned to the right and supported Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. In 2012, Le HuffPost considered him a right-wing journalist, and François Hollande refused any interview with Le Figaro during the 2012 French presidential election, and would have demanded his departure from the newspaper.

Other activities Mougeotte briefly worked as an associate professor of journalism at Sciences Po.

Death Mougeotte died of tonsil cancer in Paris at the age of 81 on 7 October 2021. His funeral was celebrated on 13 October at Saint-François-Xavier, Paris.

Publication Pouvoirs (2021)