[MEDIAS] After the closure of C8 by Arcom, CNews in the hot seat?

And a new sanction from Arcom against CNews, one! It's been a long time. Four months, to be precise. This time it's the show In search of spiritbroadcast on February 25, 2024, which displeased the media regulatory authority.

The affair caused quite a stir at the time. All the figures on the channel felt obliged to cover their heads with ashes on the air and to swear, hand on heart, that they were in total disagreement with the comments that had been made on the show. religious. So what were these terrible words which have just cost CNews a whopping 100,000 euros? The presenter Aymeric Pourbaix had dared to describe abortion as “leading cause of death in the world”. An unbearable statement in the eyes of Arcom, because the statement equates the aborted embryo or fetus to a deceased person “even though in law, they are not considered as people”. In other words, it is the Christian conception of life that has been deemed outlawed.

But there is something even more serious. Arcom considers in fact that despite its “manifest inaccuracy”l’horrible affirmation “was not the subject of any contradiction from the other people present on set”. Therefore, this situation characterizes, for the PAF gendarme, a “serious breach” of the publisher, a breach of its obligation “honesty and rigor in the presentation and processing of information”…

Either. But in this case, we will have to consider penalizing as severely these numerous TV sets on which others “inaccuracies” are uttered without the slightest dispute. We think of this recent issue of Cash Investigation where foreign workers were classified as employees “essential”on this France 5 show where we heard that Donald Trump had a program “ethnic cleansing”to all these pseudo debates where we hear that one “genocide” would take place in Gaza. Unless some lies are more acceptable than others?

A relentlessness that is starting to show

This sanction is only the latest in a long series of “failures” notified by Arcom to the Bolloré group's news channel. Simple warning, warning, formal notice, financial penalty: the former CSA has deployed its entire repressive arsenal in recent years to punish the abhorred antenna. According to a count carried out by The WorldCNews received no less than seventeen sanctions from Arcom and the CSA between December 2012 and November 2024, with a clear acceleration in their frequency over the past four years.

Of course, other media are sometimes sanctioned. Radio J, TMC, RMC, and even Sud Radio were all warned at least once during the year. But none of them received fines in hard cash. In reality, C8 and CNews are the only French channels to have received financial sanctions! You read correctly: despite its glaring lack of pluralism, its fierce activism and its untruths spouted every kilometer, public broadcasting has never been financially sanctioned by Arcom. This fate is clearly reserved for others.

The closure of CNews as an objective?

Now that the death of C8 is almost guaranteed – a last minute rescue by the Council of State appears very improbable – Arcom can concentrate its blows on CNews. Already eight punishments have been administered at the chain since the start of 2024.

The year started off with a bang with a first fine in January. 50,000 euros were then demanded from the channel for having relayed a ranking on the dangerousness of France and having presented it as based on established facts, when it was the result of a simple survey. Everyone knows that the “feeling of insecurity” has no link with reality… Let us also remember that last August, the France 2 news presented an extract from a video game as being a real sequence, from archives. We are still waiting for the sanction from Arcom.

In March, CNEWS was called to order for a sequence of Pro Hour in which Pascal Praud dared to question the possible link between immigration and the multiplication of bedbugs in France. A question full of common sense which had earned the channel a warning for non-compliance with its “obligation not to incite hatred”.

It is the same offense which was invoked two months later, concerning comments made by Geoffroy Lejeune. The latter had affirmed that anti-Semitism and prison overcrowding were consequences of “Arab-Muslim immigration”. An analysis whose accuracy Arcom has not contested but which, due to its nature “discriminatory”cannot be said on television. 50,000 euros were still requested from CNews.

The anti-CNews vindictiveness became further radicalized in July 2024, with no less than four sanctions in just one short month: warning for promoting an investigation by the magazine black bookwarning (required by Reporters Without Borders) for non-compliance with the « pluralism »fine of €20,000 for “climate skeptic comments”fine of €60,000 for “Comments stigmatizing immigrants”.

Reading these sanctions – all available on the Arcom website – provides information on the nature of what CNews is really accused of. These are less about factual errors or “misinformation” than about crimes of opinion. Most of the sanctions imposed on the channel concern fair comments, but contrary to the dominant ideology or in violation of the very liberticidal Pleven law.

This time again, it is our misguided “rule of law” which is being used to restrict freedom of expression. The same rule of law which authorizes deputies to launch a commission of inquiry into certain private media and Arcom to withdraw a channel's broadcasting authorization.