On January 16, the host of the C8 flagship program “Touche pas à mon poste” (“TPMP”) split a long and violent rant against public audiovisual. Without a opponent, in front of an audience of columnists as docile as in a hurry to testify their deference to their boss, Cyril Hanouna assembled his sentence: “4 billion euros?!”; “With 4 billion, we can make cars for the police, we can offer some hospitals, we can increase teachers …”, “Private me all that!” Too bad for the nuance and the quality of the argument.
“4 billion euros?!”, is it still too much? It does not matter that France is one of the European countries where the financing of public audiovisual has experienced the most budget cuts in recent years and that the abolition of the royalty mortgages its financial future. It doesn’t matter that with 0.16 % of the gross domestic product (GDP), the amount dedicated to it much lower than in our friends German (0.27 %) and English (0.28 %) .
Ideological crusade
Why is the fact that the quality of public information is a decisive condition for the democratic vitality of a country and that it draws the quality of information in general? For Cyril Hanouna, the problem is not that we spend 4 billion euros, but that we can devote to public audiovisual the least Euro.
And too bad if the French and the French consider to be able to find more “independent” and more “neutral” information as well as more “intelligent” and “serious” programs on radio and public television channels (see, For example, the study of OpinionWay published in 2018 on “the future of public audiovisual”), at the very moment when misinformation and conspiracy theories are multiplying. And where media – especially those who are today in the hands of Vincent Bolloré – are put at the service of an ideological crusade.
It must be said that, on the side of the private media, the trend of recent years is rather the lessening of political pluralism on the screen. C8 and CNews, properties of Vincent Bolloré, have been put on notice several times by the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Communication Authority (Arch), the ex-superior audiovisual advisor (CSA), for breach of rules of pluralism in the media.
They did not hesitate to underline the antenna times of representatives of the extreme right, to the point that a study of the political sitemedias counted between June 2020 and June 2021 more guests from the extreme Right (36 %) at CNews only left left (17 %) and the presidential majority (17 %) combined…
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