Athitioned by senators at a media concentration investigation commission, the Breton businessman has endeavored to minimize the place occupied by his group in the sector.
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Vincent Bolloré is the simple advisor of a very modest group on the American and Asian giants. There is almost no power, except to give his opinion. Its CNEWS channel, which placed Eric Zemmour on the launching ramp in the presidential election, is absolutely not a chain of opinion. Senators, who opened a commission of inquiry into the concentration of the media on November 24, 2021, offered Wednesday 19 January a boulevard to the first shareholder of Vivendi, who could, without great contradiction, develop this astonishing rhetoric.
“I answer individually, I have no title”, thus started by insuring the Breton industrialist, like a walker entered the Senate by courtesy, or because the light was lit. It took little doubt of the interest of the parliamentarians to hear the boss of a press group (Prisma, and soon the JDD and Paris Match, the group Lagardère), from Radio (Europe 1, also at Lagardère), television (Canal +), cinema and publishing which, obviously, had decided to deliver alternative truths on its own account.
“I do not have the power to name anyone inside the chains, I can propose, give my opinion,” said the one who is officially simple “adviser” of Vivendi, unofficially his first captain . A kind of mania, inherited according to childhood: “Vincent mixes with everything, it has only to take my place,” he would have explained his school mistress to his parents. “My personal ability to impose things is not very important,” he insisted. Convened by the Senate, Vincent Bolloré had, however, had to take an oath, a false testimony in this chamber being subject to sanctions.
CNEWS, an opinion chain? “It does not have an interest”
In questioning about the nature of his intentions at the head of his group, the almost septuagenaire in pearl gray costume has been defended from any political or ideological company. Presenting himself as a “Christian Democrat”, attached to freedom of expression – to cite the sentence sent to Voltaire (“I do not agree with you, but I will fight until my death so that You have the right to say it “) to claim the reception reserved by CNEWS to Eric Zemmour, he also denied the fact that it is a chain of opinion. “It does not have an interest,” he said, while the emissions host mainly columnists ranked right or even far right.
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