Aurélien Saintoul, deputy for La France insoumise, had assured this.
The hearing at the National Assembly of the leaders and personalities of the Canal+ group, owner of CNews and C8, “
will not be a boxing match
”, he promised in Le
Parisien
.
On Thursday, the Commission of Inquiry into the allocation of digital terrestrial television frequencies which he initiated and of which he is the rapporteur, was nevertheless held in a very electric atmosphere.
Exchanges between the deputies and Maxime Saada, the chairman of the board of directors of the Canal+ group, Gérald-Brice Viret, the CEO of Canal+ France, Serge Nedjar, the general director of CNews, as well as the headliners of the news channel Pascal Praud, Laurence Ferrari and Sonia Mabrouk have often been at loggerheads.
To the point that the president of the parliamentary committee, Quentin Bataillon (Renaissance), had to intervene, on several occasions, when the insistent questions of certain deputies - on Palestine for example - became irrelevant.
Read alsoWhy the Council of State is forcing Arcom to tighten editorial control of television channels like CNews
The context is highly flammable.
Arcom has just called into question the authorizations of fifteen digital terrestrial television (DTT) frequencies, including those of CNews and C8, regularly under fire from criticism.
Latest controversy: on Sunday, Bolloré's news channel presented abortion as the "
leading cause of death in the world
" in an infographic, sparking a general outcry.
“
An unforgivable error
” assumed Serge Nedjar, in front of the deputies, indicating that an internal investigation was underway.
"We are not fools"
About ten days ago, the Council of State also ordered Arcom, the media regulator, to strengthen its control of pluralism on CNews, and, in turn, on all radio and television channels “
The precisely targeted media is CNews,
” criticized Pascal Praud.
“
We are not fools
,” insisted Laurence Ferrari.
“
I would be curious to see France, which would undoubtedly be the only democracy in the world, to start listing journalists and editorialists
” according to their political color, denounced Maxime Saada.
However, on this issue of pluralism, “
if the rules change, we will comply with them,
” he assured.
Read alsoAfter a classification equating abortion to a “cause of mortality”, CNews apologizes
The question of transforming CNews into an opinion channel was also at the heart of the debates.
Some deputies considered that the channel had a pro-Russian or pro-Israeli bias... Others evoking censorship concerning certain subjects which would irritate Vincent Bolloré... “
CNews is criticized for many things
” underlined Serge Nedjar before to add that it “
claimed to be a channel of all opinions
”.
The general director of CNews also refuted any interventionism or “
pressure
” from its shareholder Vincent Bolloré.
Some of the deputies of the commission of inquiry clearly have CNews in their sights.
Maxime Saada did not fail to point out that the hearing of several leaders and personalities of his group for “
an entire day calls into question the impartiality
” of the work of the commission of inquiry.
At the beginning of February, one of its members, the ecologist Sophie Taillé-Polian, launched a petition to say
“
no to the renewal of the approval of CNews and C8
”
.
This debate is not new.
The previous Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, had raised the possibility for Arcom not to renew their frequencies... “
The national issue should be primarily that of knowing how we allow national players to compete with actors who escape local regulations, rather than trying to suppress channels, channels which contribute to media pluralism and have demonstrated their interest to the public
,” recalled Maxime Saada.