Enquête sur « Legend », le média de Guillaume Pley

The goal is that the future presidential campaign will be about the legend. Hello Jordan. Hello Guillaume. Welcome Mr. President, thank you for coming. Thank you for welcoming us. Legend equals the will of Guillaume, the ideas of Guillaume and the mood of the moment of Guillaume. It's a bit of a dream that comes true to do your own media with its own editorial line where there is precisely no politics, where there is no party taking. Guillaume Play can call you at any time, even on Sunday, with huge work loads and a lot of pressure. And very quickly, a 35 hours, it becomes a 55 hours.

These testimonies are those of former employees of the media "Legende" of Guillaume Blais. Hello everyone and welcome to "Legende". They agreed to talk to us about their experience in exclusivity. And to preserve their anonymity, we have reconstituted the interviews. When Guillaume has an idea in mind, he can't really contradict it. He thinks better than the others, he really puts himself above. In just three years, "Legende" imposed itself in the media landscape.

Since 2025, their videos have generated an average of 85 million views per month on YouTube, and it's the podcast that's been the most listened to on Spotify in 2025. The promise of the media : to receive everyone in kindness and neutrality. In fact, our editorial line is full kindness. In my shows, I never take part. I am fully neutral. I start from the principle that there is truth in everyone. Is it that true?

To answer, Le Monde has analyzed nearly 200 videos of Legend, identified each guest to know who they are and what they are talking about. We also had access to documents showing the price that some guests are willing to pay to enter Legend. A few months after the presidential election of 2027 and as the audience and the ambition of Legend grow, you will see that the editorial treatment of this media raises questions.

In 2024, American podcaster Joe Rogan had boosted Donald Trump's candidacy. In 2027, Guillaume Pley could have a decisive influence. I wish it was the first French media.

Step 1: Go to the YouTube channel of Legend. We analyzed a year of interviews broadcast between April 2025 and April 2026. Hello everyone and welcome to Legend. The Legend Business show. Step 2: Sort each guest according to their sex, their profession, their possible political affiliation and see what they talk about.

Step 3 is to present our results to Benjamin Tinturier, a PhD in sociology. "You can ask the questions, I think I have them in mind." And here's what we remember. First, what is the legend about? The most common theme concerns finances, business and entrepreneurship. This represents 18% of the videos.

Ensuite vient la santé, avec notamment des sujets qui touchent à la sexualité ou à des maladies rares ou graves. Le plus dur pour moi est de se dire qu'ils vont m'oublier.

Then there are the subjects of society and justice, which mainly include various facts, either told by professionals, policemen, lawyers, medical lawyers, or by victims. My name is Benjamin, my spouse at the time, whom I consider to be the devil today, killed my daughter with 354 stab wounds. I'm going to tell you my story about the legs.

And it is indeed the most discussed subject in the videos, because the "Faits divers" represent 21% of the total interviews on "Legende". The famous press marronnier are present, the Freemasonry, topics on sexuality, obviously topics and "Faits divers" and topics on delinquency. These subjects, which are known to make sell, are well represented. The analysis of the titles of the videos also allows to identify this desire to sell, to buzz.

We often find shocking words. Same logic on the Instagram account with the interviews extracts chosen, the titles or even the videos relayed which are generally unusual or violent. This was the case on May 6, 2026 for example with the video of a fatal fall filmed in a non-flooded amusement park in China.

which has since been removed. There are studies that show that the clash, the sensational, the fact of winter, the violence, well, it attracts attention. It's the same mechanism when you see an access on the side of the road and you stop, you can't stop yourself. According to several former DeLegende, this stalking approach is part of the media strategy. The way DeLegende works is to go looking, to push the guest so that he tells us more and more crazy things.

We don't care if people learn things, it has to be "Wahou", people have to stay, they have to watch until the end, and they have to subscribe. And to address these subjects, Le Djan set up a strategy: give the word to the unknown. At first, we mostly had celebrities and some unknown people, but we realized that the unknown people were almost better off than celebrities, so we added more.

In the studied period, the unknown represent almost 30% of the guests. These are people who do not come to talk about their profession, but to tell personal stories or the experience of disease experienced. The other information of our data is that 70% of the guests are men, 30% women. The media does not escape the lack of parity, which is also observed in traditional media. Women are rather questioned to tell about the various facts they have experienced or even talk about sexuality.

The remark was made to Guillaume that there were not many women in the JT. And that in addition, the women who were interviewed spoke in particular about sex. But Guillaume, he's not the kind to be careful about parity. So in the Jand, there are also unknown people, but also personalities from the world of culture, media, the army, or also politicians. But we'll come back to that.

And in these personalities, some are controversial, like Dieudonné. It's been a long time since we saw you on a set. It's been a while, yeah. This interview is presented as a legal answer to another interview with Elie Semoun, where the comedian and actor talked about his former collaboration with Dieudonné. Basically, he talked about 3 minutes 30 on your duo. The video with Dieudonné lasts one hour.

One hour and nine minutes. It's only at the 43rd minute that they come back to the passages of the interview with Elyse Moon. The rest of the time, Guillaume Pley questions Yeudonné about his career, his childhood and his controversies. Did you make choices that you regret today? I have never been anti-Semitic. You have been for a while. You should say better. I was in the answer and I was outrageous in my answers.

We see you in the picture with your mother, a picture of you as a child. Your parents divorced when you were young? Yes, I was very young. We contacted a lawyer in the press to know the legal framework of this right of response. She assures us that neither the form, nor the length, nor even the content, do not correspond to the legal criteria of existing rights of response. This could have been, at best, a text broadcast under the video of Elyse and Moon.

This interview is therefore a choice and it is today the fourth most viewed video on the channel with 6.5 million views. Thank you anyway. The casting of Legends seems to be used above all as an audience goal. We still find well-known personalities, what we call the famous good customers: Laurent Deutsch, Alain Bauer, Jean-Michel Cohen, Laurent Alexandre. What he's looking for is to make buzz, click and money, that's really his priority.

This is closely linked to the sources of income of Legend, which are based on three pillars. First, all videos generate money based on views, thanks to the advertising of the platform. But that's not all. The data we have analyzed reveal that more than a quarter of the videos have a product placement mainly embodied by Guillaume P.

And for another quarter, the videos are themselves advertisements in their entirety. That is to say that business leaders pay to be interviewed in the "Gend".

It's mentioned in the description and via the YouTube notification tool at the beginning of the video. Today, it's a business legend. We're going to enter the heart of investment funds with BDL Capital Management. Hello everyone and welcome to the legend. Today, we welcome Aymeric Evnaud for a show of business legend. He created "Papillon Patrimoine". We were able to recover the price chart for an interview and a product placement in the legend.

For a sponsored ad, played by Guillaume Play, brands must pay a minimum of 17,000 euros for a show. And for an interview format like this one on YouTube, called "Legend Business", as well as extracts broadcast on social networks, you have to count a minimum of 62,000 euros. Our data also show that the most represented profession among all the guests is that of a businessman, a business leader.

You will see exceptional entrepreneurial careers too. You have a discourse on individual success, on individual merit, which is actually a discourse that respects all the principles of contemporary neoliberalism, that is to say

individual success in an exacerbated competition context. It has risen from one employee to 2,000 employees in a few years. It's a very strong speech and it works very well in the contemporary capitalist economy. Among the recurring guests of this business format, there is also Mathias Baccino, European director of the online bank Trade Republic. He will also be part of the Legend Tour scheduled this fall that his company sponsors.

This man is represented by the same agency as Guillaume Pley, Influx, an agency that also invested 1 million euros in Legend, according to its founder Manuel Diaz. By doing this interview, this exchange, there was also a huge impact for Trade Republic. There are about 100,000 people who have literally started investing. Legend therefore wants to be a media that invites everyone and that is neutral.

But our analysis of the casting and the themes covered contradicts this promise. As a social worker, there are a lot of sub-publics that I don't see, my disciplines that I don't see on Legend, socio-cultural and socio-ethnic groups that I don't see on Legend either. I'm a little embarrassed by this claim of pluralism and this way of sticking to

And when we look at the categories of guests, there is one that we have not addressed. Let's talk about political guests.

One of them struck people in December 2025. Today, an exceptional show since we are receiving President Nicolas Sarkozy, who accepted our interview. He won't do just one, by the way. Legend is the only audiovisual media to receive Nicolas Sarkozy after his release from prison after his conviction for association of evildoers in the Libyan financing case. I wanted to have the time, I wanted to, in this interview, give back the atmosphere that is in the book.

The format of "Legende" allows Nicolas Sarkozy to express himself in length, 1 hour and 48 minutes of interviews, without any real contradiction from Guillaume Pley.

There is little to be said about their contradictions, little critical elements that are brought when you have clinging personalities, personalities that are pursued by justice. There is no effort in publishing to separate facts and opinions, while it is a very important point of journalistic objectivity and writing conventions linked to journalistic objectivity. Nicolas Sarkozy came twice on the show.

Guillaume Play's agent and investor in Legend, Manuel Diaz, explains that he was at the origin of the meeting. The man indeed has a previous connection with the former president. He was the head of the digital campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012 with his company Emakina. There is indeed Nicolas Sarkozy at Legend. All our creators in their universe have dreams, we help them to reach them.

We also learned from former employees that Nicolas Sarkozy had a right to look before publishing on his first interview and was able to delete passages. We're not going to put the guest in the mess, no more let him talk.

In fact, it's like a discussion with a friend, even if we can launch some more controversial topics. Other guests also benefit from the same possibility. However, still according to former employees, anonymous guests must sometimes negotiate to make some passages be deleted or ask for the video to be retried. It sometimes scared me to see guests invited to very famous talk shows and be smashed

Nicolas Sarkozy is one of the 17 political personalities in the legend.

All of them had interviews ranging from 30 minutes to 2:30 hours, where they talk about their political career and their lives. Nice to meet you, we're going to redo your life, that's the principle of the show. You're 27 years old today, and you're the president. I'll be 28 on September 13th. If anyone wants to wish me a birthday and give me a gift, it's September 13th. It's interesting. Do you watch what people say about you on social media when you do interviews? Well, if I tell you no, you won't believe me and you'll be right.

During the 2022 presidential campaign, Guillaume Pley had already done several interviews of politicians in his campaign QG show. He claims to have invited all the candidates, but that only three have accepted: Anne Hidalgo, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, whose son had made an appearance on the set. Hello! Thank you very much, it's a great pleasure, in any case, I find it very interesting to understand a person by his son.

This way of depoliticizing by emphasizing the human being, it allows you not to speak and not to show the forms of oppression, domination, imperfect things. Guillaume Pley explained this choice in an interview. I try to do what I know how to do best, because I'm not good at politics, I have no knowledge.

but it's about trying to present the human behind the personality. Because we must not forget that there is a public side, but there is a hidden side. For Benjamin Tinturier, this approach questions the role that Guillaume Pley holds. Being a journalist in a presidential election context, it's a job.

It's easy to learn. When you see interviews at France Inter, at France Culture, at TF1, they are always imperfect. There are a lot of things to say about it. But nevertheless, we have an effort to bring contradiction, to test his speech. And then when there is something that is wrong, which is said to take it back. I'm not sure it's the same job as Guillaume Play's.

And then, other political guests come to talk about more personal subjects. Among them, there is the case of Claire Géronimi. Hello, my name is Claire Géronimi. I was raped on November 11, 2023 in my old building in the middle of Paris. At the end of 2025, the young woman is invited to tell about the rape she suffered two years earlier on the "Legends".

A commercial collaboration show with the association created by the young woman, an association supported by the conservative billionaire Pierre-Edouard Sterrin. We are in partnership with the Claire Éclat de Femmes association. Claire Géronimi explains that her aggressor is a non-domicile, Central African, under obligation to leave the territory. And also tells the trial where the man was sentenced to 18 years in prison in September 2025. What is not mentioned is that Claire Géronimi occupies a position of responsibility in a political party.

She is vice president of the Union for the Republic, the party of Éric Ciotti, ally of the National Assembly. Her party is particularly critical of the management of the OQTF in France. I try to be able to carry this voice with Éclat de Femmes and also with the UDR. In fact, we want to condemn the state when a victim is attacked by an OQTF.

Legend therefore here is the fight of this woman victim of sexual violence. Without specifying the political project she is leading elsewhere with the UDR, the two being however closely linked. Being neutral, being objective when you are a media, it's almost impossible. It's not because it's impossible that journalistic objectivity is not a moral ideal towards which you have to tend. In the case of Legend, we really have the use of neutrality as a shield against criticism.

But the journalistic practices of verifying information, of contradictions, when an guest tells you something, try to put it in front of certain contradictions, that, that makes a relative defect in the treatment of these interviews. Finally, what comes out of our investigation is the very strong link between the media legend and the personality of its creator. I wish it was the first French media.

All the witnesses described a editorial line built on hobbies and the vision of a single man: Guillaume Pley. The editorial line is Guillaume Pley. It depends on his mood of the day. This editorial line, it really fits in his convictions. I love everything that is armed, etc. He loves the military, he loves weapons. Besides, he has some at home. And so it feels a bit like the editorial line. Besides, he thinks that his point of view on life is the general life of all French people.

You have the medals here and here you have the certificates. So the certificate, I'm a operational shooter. Hello everyone, welcome to the legend of today's exceptional documentary, the 1st fighter regiment, it's the heavy cavalry, that is to say the Leclerc assault tanks. He is rather in admiration in front of Trump because for him he is a guy with a hand, he is a strong guy and he likes strong guys. I would like to meet Elon Musk.

especially on the aerospace part. This imposed vision prevents some subjects from dealing with it, according to several former employees. They explain, for example, having had difficulties dealing with the war in Gaza on Instagram, evoking decisions by Guillaume Pley. Some also denounce complicated working conditions and daily pressure.

When Guillaume has an idea in mind, he can't really contradict it. He thinks better than the others, he really puts himself above. Guillaume Play is really everywhere, all the time, always above the shoulder. The only times he's going to say thank you, it's in front of the camera and in front of the guests. The guy is obsessed with the numbers and the result. So it's never good enough and it's always the fault of the teams. Guillaume Play can call you at any time, even on Sunday, with huge workload and a lot of pressure. And very quickly, a 35-hour, it became a 55-hour.

As we have seen, in Legend, all the publics are not interviewed and the over-representation of finance and various facts shapes the editorial line. The benevolence put forward, it, sometimes flirts with complacency when it comes to some guests, politicians in particular. And this is not trivial in the current context.

In 2024, the election of Donald Trump in the United States marked a turning point in the way candidates campaign. The podcast took a very important place, so much so that the podcasters were thanked on the evening of the election of Donald Trump. I want to thank the Nelk Boys, Aiden Ross, Theo Vaughn, Bustle with the Boys, and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan.

In France, we are less than a year away from the presidential election. In the context of a presidential campaign, it is clear that a whole bunch of candidates will try to find new channels of broadcast that will not be those of traditional media. So it is clear that we can expect a YouTube channel like Legend to play a leading role during the presidential campaign.