Jean-Luc Hees, former CEO of Radio France, participated for three years in the ethics committee of the Russian channel RT France, which the President of the European Commission wants to ban. He tells us what he saw from the inside.
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The war in Ukraine is also a war of communication and images. To fight against what she calls “the Kremlin’s media machine” Ursula Von Der Leyen announced on Sunday February 27 the banning of RT channels throughout the European Union. The President of the European Commission has not yet indicated how she intends to go about it legally.
The Russia Today (RT) channels are now more than 99% funded by the Kremlin. The French version of RT was launched in 2017 and its audience grew during the “Yellow Vests” crisis, to the point of becoming their reference media. Frequently accused by observers and researchers of serving Russian propaganda, the channel does not have the right of citizenship at the Élysée. In 2017, in agreement with the Superior council of audio-visual, become theFrench public authority for the regulation of audiovisual and digital communication (Arcom), the RT channel has set up an ethics committee in which the former CEO of Radio France claims to have participated on a voluntary basis. He left this body in 2020 after completing his three years in office. “The ethics committee had no influence on the editorial line and I left because this editorial line is not mine. I have no outrageous sympathy for the ‘yellow vests’ and the demonstrations. I was there to check that there was no slippage.”, specifies Jean-Luc Hees on franceinfo.
The former Radio France correspondent in Washington supports the measures desired by Ursula Von Der Leyen. “I understand and approve of the steps taken to break ties with an organization subject to the whims of Vladimir Putin. But there is a real difference between Putin and the Russian people.” observes Jean-Luc Hees.
“We are upset by what is happening at the moment and I have no sympathy for the dictator but I have esteem for the Russians and that is why I agreed to chair this committee ethics.”
Jean-Luc Heeson franceinfo
Jean-Luc Hees explains that he did not notice any major incident on the air during his presence on the ethics committee. “When the channel started, the president was so scared that she was very cautious, so at first everything went well, says the former journalist, we received a formal notice from the CSA in 2018 about the treatment of the war in Syria and the channel took it into account. For three years, I had to deal with very few difficulties because of this permanent observation.” The former president of Radio France also wishes to clarify: “Not all journalists on this channel are sold on Putin. They try to do their job properly. I am an observer of other news channels and there are formal notices for some of them.”