It was the last resort. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday rejected a request from CNews against its conviction of a 200,000 euro fine by the French courts for the broadcast of comments by Éric Zemmour on foreign minors.
The far-right polemicist described unaccompanied migrant minors on the television channel in September 2020 as “thieves”, “murderers” and “rapists”. He was sentenced last year on appeal to a fine of 10,000 euros for provoking racial hatred.
A “manifestly ill-founded” request
The channel, in the hands of ultra-conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré, was itself fined 200,000 euros by the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA, now Arcom). This fine was confirmed by the Council of State in 2022.
As a last resort, CNews seized the ECHR, invoking Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of expression. But in a judgment published Thursday, the Court, which sits in Strasbourg, ruled CNews’ request inadmissible, considering it “manifestly ill-founded”.
-A fine deemed proportionate
The ECHR recalls that the decisions of the CSA and the Council of State were based on the fact that CNews “had failed to fulfill its obligation to control the broadcast (…) since no sufficiently marked reaction had been provided by the people present on the set to the comments made” by Éric Zemmour.
She had also broadcast them without modification “even though the broadcast was slightly delayed”, noted the judges of the ECHR. “Having regard to the content of the disputed remarks (…) these reasons are both relevant and sufficient to justify in principle the sanction pronounced” against CNews, they believe. Concerning the amount of the fine, the Court considered it proportionate, CNews having repeated the offense.
“This sanction occurred even though the applicant company had previously been served notice by the CSA in 2019 to respect the same obligations as those in dispute due to comments made by the same columnist in the same program,” she wrote.
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