French public broadcaster under fire as right sets up parliamentary inquiry | France
The French public broadcaster is at the center of a political controversy. parliamentary inquiry While it examines the “impartiality, operation and financing” of state television and radio, the media is expected to play an important role ahead of the 2027 presidential elections.
The right-wing UDR party, an ally of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN), launched the investigation following claims by the far-right that public television and radio were biased against them. Le Pen, whose party is expected to advance to the final round in the presidential race, said “there is a clear problem with impartiality in public service broadcasting” and that she wants to privatize it.
The French parliamentary inquiry, which will last until March, comes at a time of tensions over public broadcasting in Europe; Trump had sued the BBC for up to $10 billion over cuts to his Jan. 6 speech, and unions at the Italian public broadcaster said Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government had too much control.
The background of the investigation is the growing dominance in France of the private media empire owned by the Catholic conservative industrialist Vincent Bolloré; Critics say it gives a platform to reactionary voices and fuels the rise of the far right. Bolloré’s CNews is the most watched news channel on television and he is highly critical of the state broadcaster.
The parliamentary commission was established after two journalists were secretly filmed having coffee with Socialist party officials. The video clip was published by a right-wing magazine in September and shown on Bolloré’s channels amid allegations that journalists colluded with the left to harm the right.
The journalists — Patrick Cohen, who broadcasts politics on public radio and television, and Thomas Legrand, a former radio journalist who is now a political columnist for the newspaper Libération — said that having coffee with politicians was part of their job and that the video was edited in a misleading way. They filed a legal complaint for breach of privacy.
During the investigation, Cohen said the video clip was referenced in 853 news threads on CNews over a two-week period and was “amplified by an unrestrained propaganda operation aimed at defaming and destroying the public service I represent.”
Legrand told the inquiry: “France has entered the age of Trumpism.”
Parliamentary sessions were heated. Socialist MP Ayda Hadizadeh, who sat on the investigation panel, said the panel had been turned into a “court” by politicians who wanted to “kill public broadcasting”. Far-right RN MP Anne Sicard said her party was being “treated like an enemy” by the state broadcaster.
Jérémie Patrier-Leitus, of the centre-right Horizons party, which is running the hearing, said the investigation was not against state television and radio.
Public broadcaster France Télévisions, which includes four national TV channels and 24 regional channels, is a major financier of films, dramas and documentaries and is France’s leading media organisation. Radio France has many national and local stations and dominates podcasting.
French president Emmanuel Macron has criticized the public broadcaster in the past and canceled the TV license fee; but a long-term financing model needs to be defined. In December, Macron began to distance himself from Bolloré’s CNews. The Élysée Palace released a social media video criticizing Macron for his support for media certification, calling the channel “disinformation”.
Alexis Lévrier, a media historian at the University of Reims, said: “There is an attack on public broadcasting in Europe aimed at weakening it as a counterforce… The thing about France is that we now have a political-media empire. [owned by Bolloré] It has unprecedented power… this group is now at the heart of the media space and has an agenda. In this agenda, the public broadcaster is the target.”
Bolloré rejected political or ideological interventionism at a senate hearing in 2022.
Adèle Van Reeth, president of state radio station France Inter, told the parliamentary inquiry: “The protection of French public broadcasting is a sign that democracy is healthy.”
