Marianne is a weekly Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

-based French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 news magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 created in 1997 by Jean-François Kahn

Jean-François Kahn

-Biography:Born in Viroflay, Yvelines, he is the brother of scientist Axel Kahn, and son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. Having obtained a degree in history, he started work at a postal sorting office, then at a printing works. He soon moved into journalism and was sent to cover the war...

 with Maurice Szafran as editorialist. The main shareholder

Shareholder

A shareholder or stockholder is an individual or institution that legally owns one or more shares of stock in a public or private corporation. Shareholders own the stock, but not the corporation itself ....

 of the company is Robert Assaraf

Robert Assaraf

Robert Assaraf is a Moroccan Jewish historian and writer. He resides in Paris, France.-Career:In 1996 he established the Centre International de Recherche sur les Juifs du Maroc and co-founded l’Union mondiale du judaïsme marocain in 1999.He is also the president of Radio Shalom and...

 with 49.4% of the shares .

Overview

Marianne claims a distribution of 300,000 copies per week but topped at 580,000 with French news magazine record breaker "The True Sarkozy" in April 2007.

2007 Presidential election

During the 2007 French presidential election

French presidential election, 2007

The 2007 French presidential election, the ninth of the Fifth French Republic was held to elect the successor to Jacques Chirac as president of France for a five-year term.The winner, decided on 5 and 6 May 2007, was Nicolas Sarkozy...

 Marianne's editors Jean-François Kahn, Maurice Szafran and Nicolas Domenach openly supported the centre-right

Centre-right

The centre-right or center-right is a political term commonly used to describe or denote individuals, political parties, or organizations whose views stretch from the centre to the right on the left-right spectrum, excluding far right stances. Centre-right can also describe a coalition of centrist...

 candidate François Bayrou

François Bayrou

François Bayrou is a French centrist politician, president of Union for French Democracy since 1998 and was a candidate in the 2002 and 2007 French presidential elections. In the first round, he received 18.6% of the vote, finishing in 3rd place and therefore was eliminated from the race....

 , although at the same time they exposed "the redaction's favourite" and advocated for French Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal

Ségolène Royal

Marie-Ségolène Royal , known as Ségolène Royal, is a French politician. She is the president of the Poitou-Charentes Regional Council, a former member of the National Assembly, a former government minister, and a prominent member of the French Socialist Party...

 .

Furthermore, they led a strong anti-Sarkozy campaign in the magazine including a special issue released on April 14~20 (#521) the day before the vote arguing right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....

 was "insane" (which was the title of a previous issue) in a negative portrait "of all dangers" (de tout les dangers). Such aggressive practice rather common in Great Britain and the United States is unusual in France.

Issue #521 "The Real Sarkozy" (Le Vrai Sarkozy) was named after the popular anti-Sarkozy propaganda video first released on July 5, 2006 in online services - as Dailymotion

Dailymotion

Dailymotion is a video sharing service website, headquartered in the 18th arrondissement, Paris, France. According to Comscore, Dailymotion is the second largest video site in the world after YouTube....

 (+2,132,686 views) French counterpart of Youtube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 (+927,770) - by left wing supporters group RéSo

Reso

Reso can signify multiple things:* Raisio , a city in southwestern Finland* RÉSO, the current name for Montreal's underground city* A nickname for the resonator guitar* Jason Reso, Canadian professional wrestler...

 (close to the French Socialist Party's Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn , often referred to in the media, and by himself, as DSK, is a French economist, lawyer, politician, and member of the French Socialist Party...

 wing) author of the "AntiSarko" 2005 online campaign, which became the magazine's best seller (580,000 copies). It was since then made online for free in the magazine's website. The issue sold well with an exceptional out of print and two reprints, but some journalists argued that the criticisms against Sarkozy actually strengthened Sarkozy's supporters per the victimization process.

The previous issue's (#520) cover titled "Sarkozy's fault: he chose Bush's America against Chirac's France" (La faute de Sarkozy: Il choisit l'Amérique de Bush contre la France de Chirac) as a reference to Sarkozy having been one of the few French politicians initially supporting the 2003 Invasion of Iraq

2003 invasion of Iraq

The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...

 which has been described by the French far left

Far left

Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...

 and left wing as a "fault", and by a part of the Gaullist right wing as a "mistake".