The conservative private television channel CNews is in the crosshairs of the French authorities, who want to impose strict controls on the grounds that the outlet does not respect the imperatives of ‘pluralism.’ This serious new attack on freedom of expression and control of the media has given rise to passionate debate and much indignation in France over the last two weeks.
On Tuesday, February 13th, the Council of State, one of France’s highest administrative courts, issued a recommendation to the media regulator ARCOM that the private channel CNews be tightly controlled. The reason? The channel is under suspicion of breaching the obligation of media ‘pluralism.’ Therefore, its journalists and columnists ought to have their speaking time strictly measured based on their political opinions.
The Council of State’s press release provoked violent reactions in France—well beyond right-wing circles—by revealing that the CNews channel, owned by Catholic billionaire Vincent Bolloré, was its prime target.
The leaden blanket of political correctness draped over media and political circles is nothing new in 2024. What has changed this time is that a public body has been assigned to exercise censorship according to extremely restrictive criteria.
In France, television channels are subject to rules that govern the allocation of speaking time between political parties, particularly during election periods. Media airtime should be divided as follows: one-third for the government, one-third for the majority, and one-third for the opposition. During election periods, channels must give political parties speaking time in proportion to their electoral results in previous elections.
An analysis of the allocation of speaking time during the 2022 legislative elections shows that CNews was one of the fairest channels, while other channels gave disproportionate speaking time to the left-wing NUPES coalition—without receiving any sanctions. Other commentators can display other graphs to ‘prove’ the opposite point. There will always be indicators, often no more than snapshots of airtime at a given moment, to tip the balance one way or the other.
The indignation aroused by the Council of State’s decision stems from the fact that CNews is a private channel and is undeniably subject to special treatment. Supervisory bodies generally show little concern for the existence of effective pluralism on public service television and radio channels, which are used to broadcasting a one-way discourse and never organising genuine adversarial debates.
The problem posed by the recommendation is profound. If everyone agrees on the need to respect a certain balance in the speaking time of personalities invited to appear on television, what about columnists and journalists? Isn’t a channel, and a private one at that, free to choose its contributors?
CNews can be criticised for favouring guests from the right of the political spectrum. But in a programme during which he was confronted by Christophe Deloire of Reporters Sans Frontières, Pascal Praud, host of “L’Heure des Pros,” one of CNews’s most popular programmes, pointed out the obvious: left-wing personalities are generously invited to appear on CNews, but systematically refuse to come.
As for the columnists who contribute to the programmes on the incriminated channel, they make themselves heard there because they know they will never be invited to the other channels, which ignore their very existence.
It is the status of these columnists that poses the fundamental problem for CNews’ opponents. When they speak, they are defending an alternative viewpoint to the dominant one. That they do so freely, from the height of their authority, is unbearable for the lecturing Left. Is there any way of cutting off speech? Registration of opinions could be one.
How do you classify a columnist? Economist and columnist Olivier Babeau asks:
How do you classify commentators and journalists? By voluntarily subscribing to a particular party? Impossible. Most commentators take care to hide their own preferences. It’s even a duty. Based on the subjects covered? They are the choice of the editors and can hardly be clearly classified (could the Left ever talk about immigration? The Right about solidarity? Would the Right never talk about solidarity?) By using the details of all the statements? There can be a great deal of ambiguity, and criticism can be levelled at all parties, as well as praise. How can a set of statements be attributed to EELV (the Greens) rather than LFI (far-Left La France Insoumise)? To LR (centre-right Les Républicains) rather than Renaissance (Macron’s party)? To Reconquête rather than the RN (Rassemblement National)? None of this is serious. And it’s even dangerous.
And that’s where the problem lies: what criteria should be used for this classification? François Jost, a researcher in information science and an authorised expert on authorised television programmes—that is, with the exception of CNews—shamelessly proposes a very simple system: rely on the labelling proposed by the newspaper Le Monde, the establishment’s reference organ. If Le Monde says that Mr. so-and-so is reputable, then he is. If Le Monde deems Mr. so-and-so to be extreme right-wing, well let’s follow Le Monde‘s advice. In all good conscience, Le Monde has thus been elevated to the rank of Pravda, or, in French history, the Moniteur universel, the official newspaper that made government decisions public during the July Monarchy and the Second Empire.
Freedom of expression and the end of press control were established in France by a series of laws passed under the Third Republic in 1881. Today, some 150 years later, during which the republican struggle has been held up as the supreme achievement of modern society, the system is leading to a formidable regression in democracy, thanks to the very people who put an end to censorship, which they considered retrograde in other times. But anyone with a detailed knowledge of French history will know that the freedom granted by the progressive republicans was no more than a controlled form of tolerance. In 1904, the left-wing government stumbled upon the ‘Affaire des Fiches’ (Affair of the Cards), a sinister affair involving the keeping of files on the political opinions and religious practices of Catholic and conservative officers. Today, under the guise of pluralism, their political descendants are proposing to put columnists and journalists on file.
This regression is brilliantly analysed by Dominique Reynié, a political science researcher interviewed on Europe 1 by journalist Laurence Ferrari. In his view, Emmanuel Macron’s France in 2024 is reverting to a situation that predates 1881, when opinion was governed by the rules of state censorship—a censorship based on quotas and surveillance. At that time, public debate was suffocated by a priori control of content, which eventually broke down because it became impossible for the police authorities to cope with the ferment of ideas, writings, and debates. Reynié is confident that the control of opinion that the Council of State intends to introduce will not last long, because it is impossible to implement, and the pressure is too great, at a time when the political system in crisis needs disputes and confrontation of arguments more than ever. History has already shown that censorship is not sustainable in the long term.
Dominique Reynié also points out an absolutely central element of the debate. The official discourse is obsessed with ideological pluralism—for good or bad reasons. But it completely ignores another equally important form of pluralism: pluralism in the themes covered by the press. The success of CNews comes from its ability to combine the two forms of pluralism. Pluralism of ideas—you hear points of view on the channel that you don’t hear elsewhere—and pluralism of themes. In fact, Cnews is the only channel to talk about security, immigration, borders, and justice, when these issues, which affect the daily lives of millions of French people, are carefully avoided in public service broadcasts. Ideological pluralism without pluralism of themes is nothing but an illusion.
Many people share the view that the Council of State has got itself into an impasse. In the words of André Vallini, former senator for the Socialist Party, the public decision is “unacceptable in principle, unfeasible in practice.” It is simply proof of the degree to which the political and administrative powers have reached, locking up debate and laws according to their own criteria that are completely out of step with public opinion. Marion Maréchal, head of the Reconquête party’s list for the European elections, makes this implacable observation: any attempt in France to tackle the immigration issue, whether in terms of legislation or public debate, is blocked by the major administrative bodies, which are in the hands of Socialists who represent less than 2% of the electorate. Jordan Bardella, President of Rassemblement National, denounced the double standards revealed by the attack on CNews, and the “permanent inter-society” of the public service, against which no one intends to fight.
Voices on both the Left and the Right have multiplied in condemning the iniquity of the Council of State, which is losing its credibility and aura in this affair. Many have no intention of remaining silent. In the meantime, the audience for CNews continues to climb. As the French proverb says: “qui sème le vent, récolte la tempête” (“who sows the wind, reaps the whirlwind ”).
