France is sometimes a curious country. Freedom of speech is often out of all proportion to what we find elsewhere. The Quebecer who arrives in Paris notices this straight away. On radio and television, commentators and politicians enjoy rare freedom of speech. The sentence is direct, the verb sharp, the right word. And they spare no one. Nothing to do with these Canadian radio “debates” where weak-minded speakers often think the same thing and apologize before speaking. I remember a Quebec friend who, every time he stayed in the French capital, before setting foot outside, would skip for 24 hours on all the news channels because he was so passionate about the controversies of the day.
However, this same country is where governments attempt to muzzle the media by means that often violate essential freedoms. That’s exactly what happened this week. The news fell like a bolt from the blue. Nobody expected it. In fact, we could not even imagine such a drift against freedom of expression.
In November 2021, the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) association filed a complaint with the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (ARCOM), which is in a way the French CRTC. The complaint targeted the latest French news channel, CNews, which the NGO accused of failing to meet “obligations of honesty, independence and pluralism of information”.
This request was rejected, ARCOM recalling that the channel perhaps had an editorial policy which displeased Reporters Without Borders, but that it nonetheless respected all French laws regarding the expression of political pluralism. You should know that, since 1986, France has had one of the strictest regulations in the world to ensure the fairness of speaking time for political parties on radio and television. This time is constantly counted down, and general channels which do not respect strict fairness in this matter are severely reprimanded.
Rejected by ARCOM, which had in the past considered that it was not a “court of opinions”, RSF turned to the Council of State. To everyone’s surprise, the highest administrative authority, largely dominated by magistrates of socialist allegiance, ruled that ARCOM could no longer be content with counting the speaking time of political figures, but that it should also count that guests, columnists and hosts!
Take any morning radio show where columnists, editorialists, various guests, comedians and hosts appear. The audiovisual regulatory body would henceforth be required, in this maelstrom of the most diverse words and opinions, to disentangle their political color.
Not only will we have to define whether a columnist is right-wing or left-wing, but which of his opinions are right-wing or left-wing. Columnist Nicolas Baverez of Figaro, a newspaper recognized as being right-wing, should it be classified as left-wing when it supports farmers’ demands for agricultural protectionism? Should the late socialist minister Robert Badinter, a man of the left if ever there was one, have been placed on the right for having declared in 2015 that “France is not in a condition to welcome the migrants who will come”? And what will we do with anyone who comes up with the absurd idea of preaching abstention in the next elections?
Because this decision will not only affect CNews, a private channel which has never hidden its right-wing orientation, even if it remains the champion of all categories of political debate. Hence its phenomenal success in a niche neglected by public channels almost unanimously camped on the left despite their public service mission. Will it be necessary tomorrow to create a Ministry of Truth like in George Orwell’s novel?
For an organization like RSF to demand more state control over information is “betrayal” pure and simple, believes its former secretary general and co-founder Robert Ménard. For Jean-Éric Schoettl, former director general of the Superior Audiovisual Council, the predecessor of ARCOM, this decision transforms the control body into an “inquisitor”. He is also surprised that the constraints of internal pluralism are “imposed on a private operator, when this requirement should exclusively govern the public service”.
Laws intended to prohibit certain opinions are unfortunately not new in France, starting with the so-called memorial laws relating to the Shoah and slavery as well as the Armenian genocide. In 2005, some of the greatest French historians spoke out against the proclamation of such official truths, “unworthy of a democratic regime”.
The same goes for this judgment which brings to mind the worst banana republics in terms of press freedom. Fortunately, we can count on the rebellious and indocile side of the French to defy such a violation of freedom of thought. But it seems very far away, this era when, all tendencies combined, opinion had defended Charlie Hebdo whatever one might have thought of this diary which had never been to everyone’s taste.