Guillaume Meurice discusses his dismissal at the end of a Konbini video published this Wednesday. “From his primary school to his dismissal from France Inter, including the presentation of his book in Paris”, the media followed the comedian to the town of Jussey, in Haute-Saône (Franche-Comté) , where he grew up.
At the very end of the report, Radio France’s sanction has just been made official. “It’s like an unemployed person,” jokes Guillaume Meurice. I was fired, a lot of people know now. As they don’t have much to reproach me for since (…) the prosecutor closed the complaints against me without further action, Radio France was forced to pile up a number of rather vague pretexts such as “lack of loyalty” , “instrumentalization of the antenna for personal purposes””.
“They did not respect the law”
Concerning the “lack of loyalty”, he explains that public radio quoted extracts from his book, In the ear of the cyclone (Threshold). “They said that I had denigrated Sybile Veil, they cited in particular a passage where I compared her to a CPE [conseiller principal d’éducation], that says a lot about what they think of CPEs,” he insists. He also explains that, concerning the use of the antenna for personal purposes, the management mentioned the fact that he would have repeated the joke “to sell books while[il n’a] never talked about [son] book in [ses] chronicles.” “When they cannot refer to the law since the law proved me right, they find other means. Possibly Radio France will lose at the industrial tribunal against me because they did not respect the law,” he concludes.
Guillaume Meurice was fired for “serious misconduct” by Radio France on Tuesday. The president of the public group, Sibyle Veil, accuses him of “repeated disloyalty” after he repeated at the end of April his controversial remarks about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made for the first time at the end of October. He compared him to a “kind of Nazi but without a foreskin”, which triggered accusations of anti-Semitism and a complaint, ultimately closed without follow-up. This also earned Radio France a warning from Arcom, the audiovisual regulator.
