OUAGADOUGOU, June 30 (Reuters) – Burkina Faso’s military government on Friday suspended the broadcast of French television channel LCI after a report on an Islamist insurgency was accused of lacking objectivity and credibility.
The news channel was suspended for three months from June 23 after a report aired in late April, Burkina Faso’s national media regulatory authority announced.
The regulator says the report exaggerated the scale of the insurgency and “seditiously” and “erroneously” exposed flaws in Burkina Faso’s military response to the crisis.
TF1, parent company of LCI, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Relations between Burkina Faso and France have deteriorated in recent years and LCI is the latest French media to be sanctioned.
The military junta has already suspended Radio France internationale and France24, accused of having given voice to Islamist militants.
In April, correspondents in Burkina Faso for Le Monde and Liberation were expelled from the country.
Burkina Faso, one of the world’s poorest countries, is battling a violent Islamist insurgency, which spread from neighboring Mali in 2015, despite international military efforts to contain it. (Report by Thiam Ndiaga, with contributions from Jean-Michel Belot in Paris; French version Zhifan Liu, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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