There is movement within the ethics committee of RMC and BFMTV. In a press release published this Wednesday, November 20, 2024, RMC BFM, owned by Rodolphe Saadé (CMA CGM), announced the appointment of Félix de Belloy as a member of the body, created by former CEO Arthur Dreyfuss in 2019 in application of the Bloche law of November 14, 2016 aimed at strengthening the freedom, independence and pluralism of the media.
One arrival, two departures
The lawyer at the Paris bar since 2002 joins in these functions the former boss of “Paris Match” Alain Genestar, the constitutionalist Anne Levade, the sociologist and former member of the Constitutional Council Dominique Schnapper, the teacher and essayist Fatiha Agag -Boudjahlat and the journalist Denis Jeambar, ex-president of Seuil.
According to an article in “La Lettre” dated November 12, 2024, Denis Jeambar, pioneer of the committee, is considering leaving it in February 2025, concomitantly with the end of the mandate of Arcom president, Roch-Olivier Maistre. Anne Sinclair did not wait for this deadline to slam the door. Member of the ethics committee since 2022, the journalist – aligned today on the France 5 schedule with “Fauteuils d'èche” – considers, like her colleague, her presence unnecessary and judges the structure to be poorly defined to be effective in a email, addressed to Rodolphe Saadé and his partners, to which “La Lettre” was able to access.
The arrival of Félix de Belloy is not strictly speaking considered a replacement, specifies the RMC BFM group in Puremédias. Elle “is part of the group's desire to complete the profiles of the members of its ethics committee, which must be composed of at least five members. We were therefore not required to replace Anne Sinclair“.
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The ethics committee never informed in advance of major problems within the editorial staff
“The letter” reminds us that “the members of this committee, unpaid, and without power of sanction, have the main mission of informing Arcom of any fact likely to contravene the principles of independence, honesty and pluralism, and to report each year a public report“. Five years after its creation, the ethics committee of BFMTV and RMC has not been the author of any feedback to the regulator, writes “La Lettre”.
And for good reason. “In fact, they are never informed in advance of major problems within the editorial staff“, observes the specialized media which illustrates this observation with two concrete examples. The ethics committee has, for example, never been involved in the arbitration relating to the broadcast or not of a report devoted to the Minister of Culture , Rachida Dati, after pressure from her office to remove it from the program schedule.
He was also not seized in the context of the Jean-Jacques Bourdin affair, dismissed after accusations of sexual assault in 2022, and the dismissal of Rachid M'Barki, after suspicions of foreign interference , in 2023. Little listened to when it criticized the too much space given to the Pierre Palmade affair in February 2023 on the BFMTV antenna, the ethics committee was still heard when he warned about the abusive use of images of burning cars, broadcast in a loop on the air, and asked that the recording time of the interviews be indicated on the air, which was taken into account.
