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Last week, in a speech at the Security Conference in Munich, American vice-president JD Vance warned Europe about the sanctity of free speech. Evidently the message was lost on the French.
On Wednesday, the Council of State, the Republic’s highest administrative court, confirmed the closure of two television stations. The pair, C8 and NRJ12, had been ordered off-air last year by Arcom, France’s equivalent of Ofcom, the regulator for the communications services in Britain.
It is the closure of C8, which has caused uproar among conservatives and the Right. The station is owned by Vincent Bolloré, the media tycoon whose conservatism and Catholicism has long made him a hate figure among the progressive Left; they talk about the “Bollorisation” of the media, conveniently overlooking that the state-run broadcaster (like the BBC) is staffed overwhelmingly by people who lean to the Left.
Last year, a journalist for Radio France was sacked merely for talking to Jordan Bardella, the president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, about the possibility of ghosting his autobiography. Bardella represents the party which won 37 per cent of the national vote in last year’s parliamentary election, but among Paris’s chattering class, Bardella is beyond the pale and so is anyone who talks to him.
According to Arcom, they forced C8 to close because they breached broadcasting guidelines, notably the station was not diverse enough in its content, which was focused on entertainment and magazine shows. That didn’t bother C8s viewers, 1.5 million of whom regularly watched the flagship show, Touche pas à mon poste, hosted by the charismatic and controversial Cyril Hanouna.
He regularly took on the Establishment, much to their fury, and over the years C8 had totted up €7.6m in broadcasting fines. In January 2023 Hanouna clashed with the far-Left MP Louis Boyard. This provoked an indignant response from the government. The then Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, used an interview with the Left-wing Le Monde newspaper to warn C8: “When, in 2025, the time comes to analyse their performance in terms of renewing their broadcasting licences, Arcom will be able to see how they have complied with these obligations.”
Hanouna said he wasn’t surprised by the decision, claiming that the “Council of State is 80 per cent made up of people on the Left of the political spectrum”. He also alleges that the man who orchestrated the closure of C8 is Alexis Kohler, Emmanuel Macron’s chief of staff. “He really wants to control broadcasting,” said Hanouna of Kohler. Around 400 journalists have lost their jobs as a result of the decision to close down the two stations. There was little sympathy from fellow journalists, trade unions or Left-wing politicians.
Marine Le Pen described the Council of State’s decision as “a terrible step backwards and a worrying decision that vindicates the ayatollahs of the one-track thinking, the dictates of a sectarian Left that only wants to see and hear one voice, that of the system”.
uk.news.yahoo.com
On Wednesday, the Council of State, the Republic’s highest administrative court, confirmed the closure of two television stations. The pair, C8 and NRJ12, had been ordered off-air last year by Arcom, France’s equivalent of Ofcom, the regulator for the communications services in Britain.
It is the closure of C8, which has caused uproar among conservatives and the Right. The station is owned by Vincent Bolloré, the media tycoon whose conservatism and Catholicism has long made him a hate figure among the progressive Left; they talk about the “Bollorisation” of the media, conveniently overlooking that the state-run broadcaster (like the BBC) is staffed overwhelmingly by people who lean to the Left.
Last year, a journalist for Radio France was sacked merely for talking to Jordan Bardella, the president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, about the possibility of ghosting his autobiography. Bardella represents the party which won 37 per cent of the national vote in last year’s parliamentary election, but among Paris’s chattering class, Bardella is beyond the pale and so is anyone who talks to him.
According to Arcom, they forced C8 to close because they breached broadcasting guidelines, notably the station was not diverse enough in its content, which was focused on entertainment and magazine shows. That didn’t bother C8s viewers, 1.5 million of whom regularly watched the flagship show, Touche pas à mon poste, hosted by the charismatic and controversial Cyril Hanouna.
He regularly took on the Establishment, much to their fury, and over the years C8 had totted up €7.6m in broadcasting fines. In January 2023 Hanouna clashed with the far-Left MP Louis Boyard. This provoked an indignant response from the government. The then Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, used an interview with the Left-wing Le Monde newspaper to warn C8: “When, in 2025, the time comes to analyse their performance in terms of renewing their broadcasting licences, Arcom will be able to see how they have complied with these obligations.”
Hanouna said he wasn’t surprised by the decision, claiming that the “Council of State is 80 per cent made up of people on the Left of the political spectrum”. He also alleges that the man who orchestrated the closure of C8 is Alexis Kohler, Emmanuel Macron’s chief of staff. “He really wants to control broadcasting,” said Hanouna of Kohler. Around 400 journalists have lost their jobs as a result of the decision to close down the two stations. There was little sympathy from fellow journalists, trade unions or Left-wing politicians.
Marine Le Pen described the Council of State’s decision as “a terrible step backwards and a worrying decision that vindicates the ayatollahs of the one-track thinking, the dictates of a sectarian Left that only wants to see and hear one voice, that of the system”.
France has just proved JD Vance was right
Last week, in a speech at the Security Conference in Munich, American vice-president JD Vance warned Europe about the sanctity of free speech. Evidently the message was lost on the French.
