On June 10th, President Macron spoke out against “the tyranny of news” (faits divers) and said that the French were being “brainwashed” about murders that hit the headlines and shocked French public opinion in recent months. In line with this observation, several left-wing MPs proposed an amendment to media regulations aimed at “conducting an editorial review of the place of news items in the coverage of current events” in the public media. Behind this move lies an attempt to stifle media coverage of these cases—which are in fact linked to immigration.
The amendment was proposed on June 25th by around 40 left-wing and far-left MPs. Under the guise of ensuring a supposed “balance of information”, these MPs are in fact attacking their favourite target: the conservative media, at the forefront of which, unsurprisingly, is the CNews channel owned by Vincent Bolloré, the bête noire of the French Left.
The text to be put to the vote in the National Assembly explicitly mentions high-profile criminal cases: the brutal murder of little Lola in 2022 and the murder of young Thomas in Crépol in 2023. According to the authors of the amendment, these crimes “provided an opportunity for political representatives, editorialists and far-right media outlets to spread racialising rhetoric.” If we translate this newspeak, here is the message: the right-wing media had the audacity to point out that those responsible for these murders were the pure products of the uncontrolled immigration policy that has been corrupting France from within for decades.
The solution proposed by the Left is therefore childishly simple: rather than asking questions about the chain of events that led Dahbia Benkired, who had been ordered to leave French territory (OQTF), to rape and murder 12-year-old Lola, or the murderers of Thomas to come to a village festival to “stab white people,” the media should just be quiet about it.
What does not exist in the media simply does not exist: this is the cruel lesson learned by Christelle Gervaise, wife of military doctor Alban Gervaise, killed by a man shouting “Allah akbar,” who was met with a media blackout on her husband’s murder.
The MPs behind this amendment justify their move by virtue signalling, the beloved exercise of the progressive Left. Information must not be manipulated for ideological purposes, repeat those same people who imported the George Floyd affair to France, turning it into a universal symbol of police violence and an opportunity to renew their anti-racist rhetoric.
As they have no control over what is said on CNews, an entirely private channel, they intend to establish a cordon sanitaire to prevent the same tone from being adopted and the same subjects from being discussed on public service channels. In future, national television news programmes will therefore be asked to remain silent on the cases of future Lolas, Thomases, Eliases, Philippines, Mathises, Albans and others.
Fortunately, the censors’ efforts are likely to come to nothing. The amendment was supposed to be part of a major reform of public broadcasting supported by Culture Minister Rachida Dati, but MPs rejected the reform outright when it came before the House on Monday, June 30th. The reform proposal must now be presented to the Senate: it remains to be seen whether any senator will have the gall to endorse an amendment censoring information as it stands.
