[1] Val was briefly the editor of the satirical political weekly La Grosse Bertha in 1991, and appointed Cabu, Charb, Gébé, Peroni, and Tignous to his editorial team.

[3] After he was removed from his position in 1992, he helped re-launch Charlie Hebdo together with Bernard Maris, Xavier Pasquini, Albert Algoud, Olivier Cyran, Luz, and Riss.

Several contributors and journalists, including Olivier Cyran, Mona Chollet, and Philippe Corcuff protested against Val's ideas and left the magazine.

[6] Val co-signed a petition, "le manifeste des 12", together with Bernard-Henri Lévy, Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin and eight others, which denounced the dangers of Islamist ideology, calling it a "new totalitarianism".

[4] In April 2018, Val drafted a manifesto "against the new anti-Semitism", which was signed by 250 personalities in France including Nicolas Sarkozy, Manuel Valls, Jack Lang, Julia Kristeva, and Gérard Depardieu, condemning the "silent ethnic cleansing" of Jews by Muslims in certain parts of France.