After the closures of RT in March, then of RTR Planeta and Rossiya 24 in June, Eutelsat must cut off the broadcasting of a new Russian television channel. The Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom) on Wednesday, August 3, gave the French satellite operator formal notice to cease broadcasting in Europe of NTV Mir, the international version of the NTV channel. for the Russian diaspora in Europe and North America. NTV Mir is broadcast in Europe by Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13C satellite. The NTV television group is owned by the Russian gas giant Gazprom.
Arcom, on the basis of various programs broadcast in April, accuses NTV Mir of remarks inciting hatred or violence. “NTV Mir tends to repeatedly present not only the Ukrainian leadership and the Ukrainian army, but above all the Ukrainian population as adherents of the Nazi ideology of the IIIe Reich and representing an extreme danger”explains the authority, for which “these comments convey a particularly disturbing and threatening image of the Ukrainian population as a whole, likely to incite hatred against them”.
Neutrality policy
Arcom also sanctions “several serious and baseless allegations, feeding the springs of Russian propaganda” and “disseminated in particular to legitimize the war in Ukraine”. Eutelsat announced late Wednesday morning that it had immediately implemented Arcom’s request, “in connection with the distributor who holds the contract with this chain”. André Lange, one of the two co-founders of the Diderot Committee, an organization created in March to fight against Russian propaganda, welcomes the decision of Arcom, but he judges it “marginal” given the low audience of NTV Mir.
The Diderot Committee wants to go further. He is preparing a file reporting the Rossiya 1, Pervy Kanal and NTV channels to Arcom, and he is still asking for Eutelsat to close the broadcasting of the NTV-Plus and Tricolor bouquets. Joined in its action by the NGO Reporters Without Borders, the committee seized the French Ministry of the Economy. But he defends Eutelsat’s policy of neutrality. The latter fears that a breach of its neutrality will open the way to multiple requests for intervention that do not meet the regulatory framework to which it is subject, in France and in Europe.
On July 18, Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian Minister for Foreign Affairs, pleaded before the Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union for “all Russian television channels are banned from European cable and satellite networks”. “It’s not about freedom of speech, it’s about depriving Russia of tools to spread disinformation and state propaganda,” he argued. No such measure is included in the package of new sanctions adopted at the end of this meeting.