Grandstand. Albert Camus wrote: “Anything that degrades culture shortens the paths that lead to servitude. » Culture was, as too often, absent from the presidential campaign. Until the President of the Republic takes up as his first proposal the only cultural slogan of the far-right candidates: “We must remove the fee”.
So, yes, we are angry. The royalty is not an additional tax. It is the unbreakable bond that unites us to the public. It is a pivot of French artistic, cultural and democratic life.
To remove it is to threaten the financing of almost all documentaries in France. This is jeopardizing two thirds of our French series and fiction. It is an attack on the vast majority of French cartoons that our children watch. All over the world, we are jealous of our films and our audiovisual industry, and the president-candidate wants to degrade it, even destroy it?
Intangible principles
We, women and men, journalists, producers, actors, filmmakers, directors, writers and intellectuals, take up the pen to defend fundamental values. For us, public and private are not the same. It will never be the same.
Thanks to public TV and radio, and thanks to them alone, we can listen to hours of music, we can see different films, we can discover writers, artists, debate ideas, awaken to the mysteries of science . How many millions of French people entered a theatre, opera or concert hall for the first time thanks to public radio and television? We can do more – and we want to. We must not do less.
We defend principles that we would like to be intangible, such as the independence of information. Providing reliable, quality information, without worrying about pressure from economic or political powers, that is the mission of public service journalists. We can criticize their work, but at a time when democracy is being undermined everywhere and when the media are being brought into line, which editorial staff will tomorrow be free to carry out investigations as those of Radio France or France Televisions?
We defend the soul of democracy. Informing, educating, entertaining, these are the missions of public broadcasting, this sector protected and guaranteed since the Second World War by license fees. From Matteo Salvini to Boris Johnson, via the Democratic Center Union (UDC), in Switzerland, all populists have targeted this fee which offers far too much independence to public broadcasting.
You have 59.01% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.