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Called “the barometer of Algiers” by his contemporaries, Alain de Sérigny, the director of the leading daily newspaper L’Écho d’Alger was a Pétain supporter and an erstwhile backer of de Gaulle: he was also the only journalist to be indicted during the barricades trial. This article shows the complex web of political and media ties surrounding Sérigny in colonial Algeria. It also sheds light on the strategies the journalist used to make his daily newspaper into a sounding board for Europeans in Algeria who felt abandoned by metropolitan authorities, thereby helping to form an elusive public opinion. By highlighting an episode of the “Franco-French war”, this work also examines the press baron’s more Gaullist beliefs.