The channel and the former journalist contested the sanction taken by the CSA, after one of Eric Zemmour’s remarks on unaccompanied migrant minors.
Article written by
Published
Reading time : 1 min.
The fine is confirmed. The Council of State rejected the requests of Eric Zemmour and CNews to cancel the fine of 200,000 euros imposed on the channel by the media regulator for “incitement to hatred” and “to violence” after remarks far-right polemicist. At the heart of the dispute, a sanction taken in March 2021 by the CSA, which became Arcom, after a diatribe by Eric Zemmour in the program “Face à l’info”, on unaccompanied migrant minors, whom he had qualified of “thieves”, “murderers” and “rapists”.
These same remarks had earned him in January a conviction for incitement to hatred and a fine of 10,000 euros from the Paris Criminal Court. Eric Zemmour, now leader of the far-right Reconquête! party, also appealed the decision.
Regarding the sanction of the CSA, the highest administrative court in France considered inadmissible the appeal of the polemicist. Even though he is “the author of the remarks in question and even though this sanction would, according to him, damage his reputation, he is not admissible to ask for its cancellation, and his request must be rejected for this reason”specifies the Council of State in a decision taken on Tuesday 12 July.
Same failure of the appeal for CNews, the court considering that “the disputed penalty is well-founded”. “On the one hand, on the disregard by the CNews channel of its obligation not to broadcast programs inciting hatred and not to encourage discriminatory behavior” and “on the other hand, on a breach of its obligation to control the antenna”, she motivates. The fine will contribute to the budget of the National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image.