The audiovisual regulator reproaches the information chain, controlled by Vincent Bolloré, not having respected its pluralism obligations.
Le Monde with AFP
The notice of the Audiovisual Superior Council (CSA) against CNEWS is multiplying. The audiovisual regulator criticizes the information chain, controlled by Vincent Bolloré, to have largely relegated the government and France unsuitable at very low hours of hearing during the night programs. The CSA therefore guided CNEWS, Friday, December 3, to respect its obligations in terms of pluralism.
In a decision published on its site, the CSA noted that between the 1 October and November 15, “a very significant proportion of the interventions of the executive and France unsuitable has been broadcast in programs scheduled for midnight and 5 hours 59 “. According to the CFS statement, “more than 82% of the total volume of executive interventions and more than 53% of the speaking time of the representatives of France unsuitable” were broadcast in this time slot.
The Canal + group contests
“It appears, moreover, that the executive and France unsuitable were the only categories of stakeholders to be the subject of programming conditions as massively unfavorable and results in between 6 hours and 11:59 am, By a marked under-representation, with respective proportions of 8.6% and 3.7% of the total time of intervention on this time slot, adds the guarantor of the pluralism of the media in France.
The CSA reports to have alerted November 3, by mail, CNEWS, which belongs to Canal +, held by Vivendi, on “the need to ensure an exposure of more balanced political formations in the light of the broadcast times”. On 23 November, the Canal + Group had “contested the position withdrawn by the Council and refrained from announcing measures likely to resorb, even partially, the imbalances noted”.
Outside election period – which is still the case currently, until the January – the rule is to give the floor for a third of the time to the executive (it is- To say the President of the Republic, his collaborators and the members of the Government), recalls the CSA. Believing that CNEWS has not complied with its obligations, the CSA therefore puts the chain of complying with it “by December 31, 2021 and in the future”.
Possible Sanction
Interviewed by the France-Presse Agency (AFP), the CNEWS Communication Branch stated that “in accordance with the law, the CNEWS channel will respect the time at December 31”. A formal notice constitutes a kind of warning and exposes CNEWS, in case of recurrence, a penalty that can go a fine to a suspension of the broadcast of a program, through temporary deprivation of advertising.
The process of relegating certain policies at late hours is quite classic, and CNEWS is not the only information chain continuously made. At the end of 2020, LCI had been criticized to disseminate interventions from the Ecologist Yannick Jadot at late hours.
This is not the first time that CNEWS has mesh from the CSA. Last September, the chain had to deprive its star, Eric Zemmour, locomotive of his hearings since 2019, from his show “Faced with the info”, constrained, like all the audiovisual media, by the CSA to count the time of speech the polemicist, who has become, since November 30, candidate for the presidential.
Last June, the CSA had, moreover, already put the chain, but for another case: he reproached him then to have given the floor to the NR candidate for the regional elections in the Ile-de -France, compared to other lists. And in March, the CSA had inflicted CNEWS a fine of 200,000 euros for “hate incentive” and “violence” as a result of Eric Zemmour’s comments, on isolated minor migrants.