It had been three and a half months since the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom) had issued a decision against CNews. Thursday, November 14, in the early evening, it discreetly ended this truce by publishing on its site two new financial sanctions, adopted the day before in plenary session.
The first, of 100,000 euros, sanctions the Canal+ group’s news channel for having presented without contradiction, on February 25 in the program “En quest d’esprit”, abortion as a “a cause of death” ; in doing so, the broadcaster misunderstood its “obligation of honesty and rigor in the presentation and processing of information”estimated Arcom. The second, in the amount of 50,000 euros, condemns an identical breach: on September 28, 2023, the show “Morandini Live” had in fact hammered “inaccurate facts”, according to which “parents of Muslim students had successfully lobbied the management of a college in Pau to make a prayer room available to students during a school trip”. Information “mobilized” pour “to fuel a debate on stage (…) pretext for virulent and polemical positions”argues the Authority.
These two decisions arise at the time when the regulator establishes with CNews (but also with CStar, Canal+, BFM-TV, LCI, etc.) its next agreement, i.e. the regulatory text which sets the obligations that the channel undertakes to respect in exchange of an authorization to broadcast on DTT for the next ten years. A delicate moment which seemed, until then, to be accompanied by a certain discretion on the part of Arcom, after a spring and the beginning of summer marked by several painful arbitrations for the channels of the Bolloré group – starting with the refusal to grant C8 a new authorization. At the end of July, the regulator even issued a “caution” towards CNews, after having had to re-examine a referral from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) dating from May 2021. “ All that for that? »the NGO then joked about its X account, believing that it was“a weak sanction, which raises fears that the same causes produce the same effects”.
The “obvious and lasting imbalances” sanctioned
Brought before the Council of State, RSF’s request resulted in the regulator being required to redefine the rules on respect for the pluralism of currents of thought and opinions in the media. Its deliberation, stated on July 18, should have been accompanied by another relating to respect for “independence of information” (towards shareholders who own media). Not seeing anything coming on this subject, RSF on 1is October, once again seized the Council of State, learned The Worldso that the president of the studies, foresight and cooperation section of the highest administrative jurisdiction “may prescribe the measures which it considers useful to ensure the proper execution of the decision of February 13, 2024”specifies the request from Patrice Spinosi, RSF’s lawyer, which the newspaper was able to consult.
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