In an often tense atmosphere, the deputies of the parliamentary commission on the allocation of DTT frequencies heard, on Thursday February 29, the management of the Canal group and star presenters from CNews, such as Pascal Praud, Laurence Ferrari and Sonia Mabrouk .
There was particular discussion of the decision of the Council of State of February 13 asking Arcom, the media regulator, to strengthen its control over the news channel in the hands of conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré, who must be heard by this same commission in mid-March. For the administrative judge, the regulator must not limit itself to counting the speaking times of political figures to ensure respect for pluralism but must “take into account the diversity of currents of thought and opinions represented by all participants to broadcast programs”.
“If the rules change, we will comply. We will be attentive and curious to know the modalities,” assured the CEO of the Canal group, Maxime Saada, for whom “France would undoubtedly be the only democracy in the world to begin to file journalists and editorialists.” “I would not like to be in the place of Roch-Olivier Maistre”, the president of Arcom, he quipped. The CEO also announced, unsurprisingly, that his group was going to once again “apply for all of [its] pay and free channels for TNT”, while the frequencies are back in play.
Saying she was very “respectful of the decision of the Council of State”, presenter Laurence Ferrari also underlined her “concerns regarding the implementation of the regulation of the speaking time of [their] guests and their labeling”. “We are not fools and we know very well that a channel is targeted in the first place,” she continued, referring to CNews.
Pascal Praud defends CNews’ “pluralist exchanges”
Questioned several times by the deputies to know if CNews was a news channel – as required by the agreement signed with Arcom –, or if it had transformed into an opinion channel by favoring on-set debates , Mr. Saada stressed that in 2023 “on average, every day, more than 5.7 million viewers” watched CNews. “There is no doubt in the mind of the public and in my mind that CNews is a news channel,” defended Mr. Saada. For Pascal Praud, “if you are content to be purely factual and to be a reader of news reports, you will teach people nothing.” “So we must actually provide them with perspective, decryption, analysis or even controversy, why not, which precisely allows for a pluralistic exchange,” added the presenter of “L’Heure des pros”.
Before the deputies, the CEO of the Canal group, Mr. Saada, also recognized that the broadcasts of host Cyril Hanouna on C8 could produce “excesses” but, he assured, “it is a risk that we take ". “What makes Cyril Hanouna successful is his nature, his spontaneity” and “this can give rise, when we are live, to excesses” leading to sanctions from the media regulator, Arcom, said he added. “When we are sanctioned, we comply with the sanction”, underlined the boss of Canal. The rapporteur of the commission of inquiry, Aurélien Saintoul (La France insoumise, Hauts-de-Seine) then commented: “the Arcom fines are not dissuasive”.
A “technical error” after the distribution of a controversial infographic on abortion
The show “Touche pas à mon poste” (“TPMP”) by Cyril Hanouna – who himself is due to be heard on March 14 by the parliamentary committee – has earned numerous warnings and sanctions from Arcom in recent years to C8, for a total of €7.5 million. Including a record fine of 3.5 million after Mr. Hanouna insulted the “rebellious” MP, Louis Boyard (Val-de-Marne) during a broadcast in November 2022. “A disproportionate sanction”, estimated M .Saada. Gérald-Brice Viret, general director of Canal France, in charge of broadcasts and programs, was keen to “put these sanctions into perspective, ensuring that over “eight thousand hours of live broadcast per year, we are less than 0, 05% of sequences that are contentious.”
Members of the management of Canal and CNews were also questioned about the broadcast on Sunday of an infographic making abortion the “leading cause of mortality in the world” during the religious program “En quest d’esprit ". The channel later apologized, pleading “the technical error.” Denouncing a “horrible, despicable presentation of abortion”, the president of the parliamentary committee, Quentin Bataillon (Renaissance, Loire), asked Serge Nedjar, general director and editorial director of CNews, “where is this has crashed ? What have you put in place since then to prevent this from happening again? ".
In response, Mr. Nedjar spoke of a “trauma”, an “unacceptable error, especially since it was a recorded program” two days before its broadcast. According to the general director of CNews, a “second version” of the show had been reworked “in editing” the day before its broadcast without this sequence. “It is this second version which should have been broadcast but at that time, there was a technical problem which meant that this “V2” did not enter the distribution pipelines [and] the people concerned returned the first version which was the one that we obviously wanted to ban,” defended Mr. Nedjar, specifying that an “investigation is underway.”
