Ignacio Ramonet Miguez is a Spanish academic, journalist and writer who has been based in Paris for much of his career. After becoming first known for writing on film and media, he became editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique, serving from 1991 until March 2008. Under his leadership, LMD established editorial independence in 1996 from Le Monde, with which it had been affiliated since 1954. Ramonet published an editorial in December 1997 in LMD on the Tobin tax that led to the launching of ATTAC. This is an activist organization promoting taxation of foreign exchange transactions. In addition, Ramonet is one of the founders and president of the NGOMedia Watch Global. He frequently contributes to El País, among other media, and participates in an advisory council to TeleSUR.
Life
Ramonet was born in Redondela, Spain, in 1943. He went to Tangier, Morocco, to study engineering. He continued these studies at Bordeaux, Rabat and Paris. In Paris he earned a PhD in Semiology and the History of Culture, at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales - EHESS, one of the French Grande Écoles. He has been a professor of Communication Theory at Paris Diderot University. He also taught at the Sorbonne. He first started writing journalism as a film critic and writer about film for various magazines. Ramonet later wrote more frequently about media culture, communications, and national affairs, becoming associated with Le Monde Diplomatique, started in 1954 as a monthly publication associated with the newspaper. He was elected as editor-in-chief in January 1991, serving to March 2008. Under his leadership, the magazine became editorially independent of Le Monde in 1996. It has been an independent critic outside academia of media culture and its ties to national society. In 2007 Ramonet participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project.
The NGO Reporters without Borders had written about Ramonet's strong relationship with Fidel Castro. Ramonet denied this claim in 2002. In May 2004, Ramonet supported Castro in a direct television interview when Castro protested about Forbes Magazine's list of country leaders' wealth. Castro was number 7 on the list. In 2006, Ramonet praised Castro in a series of articles in Foreign Policy journal. He was approved as Castro's only authorised biographer. In September 2006, Ramonet published Fidel Castro : Biografía a Dos Voces.
According to Ramonet, globalization and ultra-liberalism threaten the sovereignty of national states. In his December 1997 editorial "Disarming the markets", Ramonet attributed the Asian economic crisis to globalization, and said that it threatened the identity of national states. To counter this, he called for an NGO to promote the Tobin tax on foreign exchange. He became a founder of Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and for Citizens' Action.
