Once again, on Monday July 15 at the headquarters of the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom), knives were drawn between, on one side, its president and his advisors, who were bombarded with questions almost all relating to CNews’ failure to meet its obligations, and on the other, the channel’s managers, who were entrenched behind a shield of unshakeable certainties.
In their eyes, their citadel is impregnable: with its recently acquired position as leader of the news channels, its “8.4 million daily viewers”his “200 journalists”his “6,400 hours of live broadcast per year” and the derisory ones “0.012% of our airtime” which gave rise to “clumsiness” leading to reprimands from the regulator, CNews has nothing to fear to see its application for a new broadcasting authorization on DTT rejected.
“In Arcom’s interventions, which we see on all our channels, there are many more external alerts and requests”complained Maxime Saada, the chairman of the board of the Canal+ group (to which CNews belongs), implying that they were the work of adversaries. “I’ll cut you off right nowMr. Saada, arrested the president of the administrative authority, Roch-Olivier Maistre, experienced in the sometimes victim-based argument developed by the Canal+ group. The regulator knows how to sort things out”.
Choreographed exchanges
Between the members of the Authority and the directors of Canal+, who are meeting again on Tuesday, July 16 for the seventh time in less than ten days (for the Planète + channel), the exchanges are now well choreographed. Once again, advisor Hervé Godechot began to list the reasons for Arcom’s criticism of CNews: “encouragement of discriminatory behavior, lack of expression of different points of view, incitement to dangerous behavior, control of the airwaves… and above all, honesty and rigor of information”either “nine times in three years”he recalled. And once again, his interlocutors minimized the facts. “In 2017, there were no sanctions. 2018: zero. 2019: zero. 2020: zero. 2021: zero. 2022: one. 2023: zero, and 4 sanctions in 2024, which we partly contest”replied Serge Nedjar, the director of CNews.
Councillor Bénédicte Lesage seemed to see a potential fifth. On Friday 12 July, questioned about the accusations of aggravated rape against two rugby players from the French national team, psychiatrist Pierre Sidon estimated that “It’s becoming very complicated for boys to have sex”she said. These latter would be “terrified by the possible consequences of withdrawing consent”, either ” a civilizational problem”; “today, we no longer have babies in the West”, partly because of“a generalization of #MeToo in which every man is potentially a rapist”has developped “the expert” on Jean-Marc Morandini’s show. “And? So what?”Mr. Nedjar said angrily, sure of himself.“Women’s rights, diversity, parity, CNews is truly the typical example of what is done best”.
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