RSF - Reporters sans frontières

11/09/2025 | Press release | Archived content

RSF pays tribute to Jean-Claude Guillebaud, its president from 1987 to 1993

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has learned with deep sadness of the passing of Jean-Claude Guillebaud, a leading French newspaper reporter, editor and essayist who was RSF's president from 1987 to 1993. He died on 7 November 2025 at the age of 81.

Within the media profession, Jean-Claude Guillebaud embodied a humanistic yet demanding vision of journalism and influenced several generations of journalists through his moral authority.

Under his leadership and alongside its founders, including its first director-general, Robert Ménard, RSF took a decisive step in developing its international mission. In 1989, RSF launched its first campaign for French media outlets to sponsor journalists imprisoned abroad, published L'information dans le monde, 206 pays au microscope(Le Seuil), a precursor to the World Press Freedom Index, and organised the first World Press Freedom Day on 20 April 1991.

Within RSF, Jean-Claude Guillebaud led a lively debate to ensure that it continued to be a space for reflecting about journalism while maintaining its solidarity campaigns for endangered journalists. His articles "The Media Against Journalism" (1990, Le Débat) and "The Media Against Democracy" (1993, Esprit), and the conferences organised in the early 1990s to examine media practices, proposed a clear distinction between the media per se and the practice of journalism.

Calling for a necessary but measured critique of the media, he wrote: "The media will always be there - tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and beyond. To slavishly pledge allegiance to them is a foolish capitulation, but to vilify them in a disdainful manner is no less foolish." He professed a love for journalism and an attachment to those "stubborn" individuals around the world who take risks to provide reliable news and information.

He warned of a "double standard" danger for RSF if it focused solely on the Global South and failed to address media excesses in the developed world's democracies. In 2005, he told Le Monde: "I thought that an NGO of this kind could only achieve legitimacy if it devoted as much energy to media aberrations in rich countries - including news-as-entertainment and ownership concentration - as to the obstacles to freedom of the press in other countries."

"As RSF celebrates its 40th anniversary, it is important to acknowledge the contributions of all those who, over the decades, have helped this collective endeavour in the service of journalists and journalism. Jean-Claude Guillebaud, a lucid observer of the contemporary world and tireless defender of human dignity, is among them, and he has profoundly shaped RSF's history. His reflections on the distinction between the media and journalism continue to inspire RSF's strategy today, in an era of upheaval in the information landscape that this visionary thinker identified as early as the 1990s.

Thibaut Bruttin
RSF director-general

RSF extends its sincerest condolences to his family, his loved ones and all those who shared his path and vision of journalistic freedom.

Published on09.11.2025
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