20 August 1944: AFP founded in insurgent Paris
PARIS, 20 August 2014 - Here is Agence France-Presse's first dispatch, published 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.
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.
