20 August 1944: AFP founded in insurgent Paris
PARIS, 20 August 2014 - Here is Agence France-Presse's first dispatch, published seventy years ago, on Sunday 20 August 1944. The Paris insurrection had been launched the day before. Taking over the media, which had been under German control during the war, was a priority objective of the Resistance. Thirsty for information after four years of censorship and propaganda, Parisians were going to snatch up the first free dailies.
One of the insurgents' targets was the Havas press agency. Founded in 1835, it had been placed under German control in June 1940 and transformed by the Vichy regime into the Office français d'information (OFI). In the early hours of 20 August, eight journalists from the Resistance (Claude Martial Bourgeon, Basile Tesselin, Gilles Martinet, Claude Roussel, Pierre Courtade, Jean Lagrange, Max Olivier and Vincent Latève) met in front of the agency's headquarters at 13 place de la Bourse. A few hundred metres away, on Place de l'Opéra, there was another German headquarters.
"I went up to the agency where I had started out as a young journalist. I spoke the words: 'In the name of the Republic, we are taking possession'", Gilles Martinet said in April 1996. "We quickly got the agency up and running, sending reporters to the Hôtel de Ville, the Préfecture de Police and all over Paris. The teletype machines were working, and most of the newspapers were in this part of Paris, liberated from the Germans: we were able to send our first telegram very quickly". Gilles Martinet went on to become AFP's first editor-in-chief.
The agency had to get back to work because the dailies were "clamouring for information so that they could publish the next day", wrote Xavier Baron, a retired AFP journalist, in his book on the history of the agency, Le Monde en direct (La Découverte), to be published on 28 August. At 11.30am, the first dispatch appeared before being distributed by cyclists: "The first free newspapers are about to appear. The French Press Agency sends them its first service".
"Even though AFP officially came into being on 30 September 1944 with De Gaulle's decree, 20 August 1944 was the founding date of Agence France-Presse," continues Xavier Baron. "AFP was the result of the merger of AFI, France-Afrique, AID and Supernap", the agencies and networks of fighting France. These journalists, who came from different backgrounds, were united and driven by "a passion for independence" to revive "a great French world news agency".
"They succeeded, despite the "collapse of France", insists the author. "You have to remember that at the time, almost all the offices (abroad, editor's note) were closed - it was total destitution! Especially as during the Second World War, rival Anglo-Saxon agencies Reuters and Associated Press continued to operate normally.
"On top of that, they were the agencies of the victorious countries, so they had everything to impose themselves and Havas was nothing! The whole team rolled up its sleeves and set out to conquer the world. The men and women of 1944 were very ambitious," insists Xavier Baron. "This generation and the spirit of the Resistance have profoundly marked the history of AFP.
These journalists, who arrived at AFP at a very young age, went on to hold management and foreign correspondent positions until the 1970s. This was notably the case of Claude Martial-Bourgeon, a member of the "group of eight", who was AFP's first director general, followed by Maurice Nègre and Jean Marin, the agency's CEO until 1975.
