Héloïse Goy, with Alexis Patri
modified to
10:36 a.m., April 06, 2022
“Big data: when politicians target us”. This is the subject of the issue of the program “Complément d’Enquête” that France Télévisions had planned to broadcast on Thursday evening. Its management finally decided to postpone its broadcast after the presidential election. The Society of Journalists of France 2 asked to meet the president of the public group.
It is a surprising deprogramming: the management of France Télévisions has decided to shift a number from Further investigation on political targeting. This issue entitled “Big data: when politicians target us” shows how private companies, paid by political parties, are responsible for convincing citizens to vote for candidates. The survey was to be broadcast Thursday evening in the second part of the evening. But this number Further investigatione will finally not be broadcast this week. At issue: the approach of the presidential election.
An election-related excuse that does not convince journalists
France Télévisions justifies this decision by explaining that, “this 24-hour broadcast of the candidates’ absolute reserve period does not allow compliance with the rules of fairness provided for by the electoral code”. The reserve period imposes a truce on the audiovisual media which prevents them from speaking about the presidential candidates from midnight next Saturday. If France Télévisions recognizes an initial programming error for this Further investigationthe journalists of the show yesterday expressed their astonishment.
Some members of the magazine’s team are even wondering about the arguments put forward by the management of the public audiovisual group. According to a reporter interviewed by our colleagues from pure mediasequences would have even been returned on purpose to respect the equality of speaking times to the minute.
Following this last-minute rescheduling, the editorial staff of Further investigation decided to alert the Society of Journalists (SDJ) of France 2, which asked to meet the president of the public group Delphine Ernotte. According to France Télévisions, this report should be rescheduled on Thursday, May 5.