[1] Jean-François Kahn was born in the commune of Viroflay in Seine-et-Oise, a former department of France, on 12 June 1938 to Jewish father and a Catholic mother.

[3] His father, Jean Kahn-Dessertenne [fr], was of Alsatian Jewish origin, from a family from Bliesbruck who settled in Nancy after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

[6] His mother, Camille Ferriot (1914-2005) was daughter of a small wood industrialist and an antisemite teacher of Swiss German origins.

He soon moved into journalism and was sent to cover the war in Algeria, undertaking the journalistic investigation that became known as the ‘Ben Barka affair’.

In 1984, he created L'Événement du Jeudi then in 1997, together with Maurice Szafran, started the weekly magazine, Marianne, where he was the editor in chief until 2007.