Louise Bernard, with Alexis Patri
The Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom) sent two formal notices to the Canal+ group channel CNews. In question, controversial remarks made by the columnist Ivan Rioufol last February and those made by the disputed infectiologist Christian Perronne last November.
False (and uncontradicted) remarks on the Second World War and the Covid-19. CNews received two formal notices on Friday from Arcom (ex-CSA) because of remarks made on its antenna. The formal notices are warnings transmitted by the audiovisual policeman, before possible sanctions. The first formal notice concerns a sequence broadcast last February on Pascal Praud’s program Time for the pros.
Ivan Rioufol, a regular columnist on the show, then made controversial remarks about the Warsaw ghetto. He said that “when the Warsaw ghetto was created in 1940, it was […] a place of contamination […]it was a hygienist place, it was a place that was made to protect against typhus”, which is a false assertion.
Arcom stresses that there is “a consensus within the scientific community to consider that the health reasons put forward by Nazi Germany […] were a pretext for the regrouping of the Jews, the first stage of their extermination.”
“Failure to honor the obligation of honesty and rigor of information” and “lack of control of the antenna”
CNews was therefore put on notice for “breach of the obligation of honesty and rigor of information”, but also for “lack of control of the antenna”, because no one on set had corrected the words of the columnist.
Nobody had reacted either during the second sequence which earned a second formal notice to CNews. It was last November. The contested infectiologist Christian Perronne had declared about the Covid-19: “There is no fifth wave […]the epidemic is almost over in France”.