"I still have lots of ideas, and above all a huge desire to continue this mission," she said earlier Monday during her hearing at Arcom (ex-CSA), facing two candidates: journalist Florent Chatain and Maïa Wirgin, Secretary General of the Court of Auditors.
At 45, Ms. Veil was the favourite, on the strength of a first term marked by record audiences - 15.4 million daily listeners on average last year - with two stations, France Inter and franceinfo, among the three radio stations most listened to in the country.
His new term runs until 2028.
In its press release on Monday evening, Arcom explains that it "has chosen to continue the transformations undertaken in recent years, the results of which in terms of audience, digital developments and access to culture testify to the ability to adaptation of the national program company to its environment and to the expectations of the public".
This appointment, however, comes in a particular context: that of financial uncertainty after the abolition of the audiovisual license fee, campaign promise of Emmanuel Macron recorded in early August.
"Anti fake news commando"
In front of Arcom on Monday, the enarque who joined the group in 2015, defended a project entitled "New generations".
"Young people are carriers of the revolutions of use and the cultural revolutions which end up imposing themselves. Which means that if we manage to win this battle, we will have succeeded in winning all the others", argued the leader, calling to "continue to build a strong audio pole within the public service".
At the heart of this strategy, Radio France's digital platform, which it intends to transform into a free and modern "audio library of knowledge", in particular by bringing together "public service audio content".
A process started in 2020 with Arte, France Télévisions, France Médias Monde, the National Audiovisual Institute (Ina), said Ms. Veil, indicating that she is also thinking with these last three public groups to develop franceinfo as "a social media". .
"With our alliance, we have the ability to be a real strike force, a kind of anti-fakenews commando," she said.
“We have to put the package on social networks: today on TikTok, tomorrow on the future network that we do not yet know”, she continued.
"We have to go and fight false information where it multiplies on their ground and for that (...) we must build the social power of our information media", she further defended, advocating "a media of conquest".
Distrust
"We also have to rehabilitate with all generations impartiality, knowledge, science in the era of the subjectivity of opinion and beliefs", she pleaded, proposing to "make available to all a free university of knowledge, make great courses and great lessons to listen to in podcasts", at a time when distrust of the media is reaching record highs.
On the future of the group, she declared herself at the end of June to be opposed to the idea of a major merger in the public audiovisual sector and said she wanted to know the projects of the State before applying for a second term.
Coming from the same promotion at the ENA as Emmanuel Macron, Ms. Veil was adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy at the Élysée, then director of transformation at the AP-HP, before joining Radio France in 2015.
She was the first woman president of Radio France since Michèle Cotta in 1981. During her first term, she worked to reduce costs within the Maison Ronde by deploying in particular a vast plan of job cuts.
This led to a historic strike movement launched in November 2019.
She had warned the deputies in mid-July that "a further reduction" in credits would be "experienced as a bonus against the effort".
© 2022 AFP
