Riot police guard French free newspaper

French press workers have scuffled with distributors of a new free newspaper.

Riot police guarded a printing site in southern France so that the Metro, could be printed.

Regular newspapers and unions feel threatened by free competitors that rely solely on advertising revenues.

Protests upset the launch of Metro in Paris and Marseille, France's second city, where union protesters destroyed 50,000 copies of the newspaper at the printing plant.

The Paris edition had to be printed in Luxembourg, where the Swedish group Metro International is based, despite a contract to print the paper at the plant of the daily France-Soir.

Two major French dailies, Le Monde and Liberation, compared the arrival of free newspapers to "dumping."

Le Monde, in an editorial, says normal papers survive on a "fragile (economic) balance" and are printed and distributed under strict, and costly, conditions dictated by union contracts. Free papers, it says, "are not without danger for the written press."

Liberation publisher Serge July says: "These free papers have the look of daily newspapers, the smell and feel of news print, but the resemblance to daily newspapers stops there".

Union members scuffled with young people hired to distribute the paper near the Trocadero metro station in Paris, and hundreds of newspapers were left scattered on pavements.

No injuries were reported, but three distributors filed separate complaints against union protesters for tearing their jackets and scattering their papers on the ground.