French journalists on Tuesday penned an open letter to their nation's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, seeking relief from what they see as an attack on the press industry from all sides, Le Monde yesterday reported.

Calling the situation "extremely troubling," The National Journalists' Union (SNJ, by its initials in French) linked the ongoing economic collapse of traditional news media to the onset of Sarkozy's term of office in May 2007, according to the letter published on the organisation's Web site.

The journalists complain that even free tabloids - which were long hailed the answer to disaffected readers - are operating in the red while paid dailies suffer enormous declines in ad revenues.

In response, the journalists say they cannot be counted on to deliver the news effectively to the public without the government's concession to the following demands: