However, publishers must ensure balance and representativeness of different ideological, philosophical and political trends in all of their programs, as stipulated in the regulations relating to radio and television programs during electoral periods.
Furthermore, “when a publisher broadcasts programs which, taken individually, do not present all the trends (?) in a balanced manner, it must ensure balance and representativeness in the overall programming of its service, on the whole of the election period.
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The CSA instruction secretariat therefore decided to question the publisher concerned, RTL Belgium, as to how it intends to “guarantee the balance and representativeness of trends in the overall programming by the end of the period electoral”.
We will have to wait until the end of the electoral period and the continuation of the examination of the instructors and their exchanges with RTL Belgium to know the possible consequences. The secretariat can close the file without further action or submit it to the CSA’s “authorization and control panel”, which can decide to sanction the channel.
A sanction in 2019 for a show of the same name
In 2019, the college imposed a warning sanction on RTL Belgium in connection with the operation “Les 48h des Bourgmestres”, carried out in September 2018 again as part of the municipal elections. The CSA had justified its decision by “non-compliance (by RTL) with the requirement of balance and representativeness of the different ideological, philosophical and political tendencies, (…) and for not having communicated its electoral system to the CSA “.
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This year, the private media has indeed published its “electoral system”, as all media covering elections must do. The program “48h of mayors” is announced there. Even if an exchange is sometimes possible with the publisher, the CSA does not generally intervene before the broadcast of a program, in order to respect the principle of editorial freedom.
