A small exception in the traditional legal landscape, the status of the professional journalist is accompanied by numerous rules that derogate from ordinary labor law. As proof, an arbitration commission is responsible for evaluating the amount of compensation due to a professional journalist licensed or wishing to terminate his contract, when his seniority in the service of the same company exceeds fifteen years. The committee is also referred to when the journalist is accused of serious misconduct or repeated misconduct, regardless of the length of seniority (Labor C., art. L. 1712-4). It should be noted that the arbitration commission, composed in a joint manner, is alone competent to set the amount of the termination indemnity, to the exclusion of any other jurisdiction (Soc. 13 Apr. 1999, n ° 94-40.090, Dalloz jurisprudence).
If the benefit of the dismissal indemnity is normally guaranteed to "professional journalists", the question has nevertheless arisen concerning more particularly the employees of "press agencies". In this regard, the judgment of September 30, 2020 is of certain importance since it clarifies, at the end of a reversal of case law, the scope of the device.
In this case, a journalist recruited in 1982 had been dismissed by Agence France Presse (AFP) for serious misconduct on April 14, 2011. He had seized the labor tribunal
