For several years now, the French news channel CNews has been in the crosshairs of the political authorities and the media because of its ‘overly right-wing stance.’ It is regularly accused of violating journalistic ethics on the grounds that it defends ideological positions opposing the dominant tone. Following a complaint from the NGO Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF, or Reporters Without Borders), the French Council of State asked that it be placed under tight control, with all the appearance of censorship.
The hostility towards the conservative television channel stems first and foremost from its pedigree. It is owned by billionaire Vincent Bolloré, France’s 14th richest man and a figure disliked bythe French Left. Descended from a deeply Catholic line of sailors and then paper manufacturers from Brittany, Bolloré and his family are now at the head of a huge media empire, owning the Vivendi and Lagardère groups, which between them control some of France’s most famous media companies—including the Canal+ channel, the HAVAS communications agency, the Dailymotion web platform, the Paris Match newspaper, the Europe 1 radio station, and many others. The actions of the Bolloré family are regularly scrutinised by the left-wing press, which takes offence at the fact that this highly cohesive dynasty still insists on functioning like a traditional Breton clan cemented by its Catholic faith. Vincent Bolloré is also known to support, often discreetly, all sorts of charities.
A golden nugget in the Bolloré family’s well-stocked portfolio is CNews. A 24-hour news channel founded in 1999 and initially known as I-Télé, it was given a new lease on life following its takeover by Bolloré in 2016, which gave it its new name and equipped it with an offensive strategy to win over a share of the French audience neglected by the major public media by taking a conservative line. It was soon dubbed the ‘French Fox News’ and managed to pull off the feat of becoming France’s number one channel in terms of audience in 2023, ahead of its much more politically correct rival BFM TV. At a time when the mainstream media are forming public opinion, its slogan is in itself a political programme: “La liberté d’expression n’a jamais fait autant parler.” (Freedom of expression has never been so much in the news.)
Unsurprisingly, with its track record and performance, CNews is a source of great annoyance and displeasure in high places. In the French broadcasting landscape, the channel stands out by offering programmes hosted by columnists with strong personalities who dare to use words to challenge the heavy-handed consensus of bien-pensance distilled by the public media—particularly on the thorny issues of insecurity and immigration.
In 2019, Éric Zemmour arrived on the French news channel to take over the 7 p.m. slot, in a programme that was soon to be a runaway success: “Face à l’info,” presented by a young and talented journalist from Guadeloupe, Christine Kelly. Audience constantly climbed, reaching 1 million viewers in November 2020.
CNews played a decisive role in the development of Zemmour’s political persona. Buoyed by his media popularity, he decided to take the plunge and enter the presidential race in 2022. The Left is not about to forgive the Bolloré-owned media outlet for providing a springboard for the candidacy of France’s most famous right-wing columnist.
Zemmour’s success on CNews was the catalyst for the first wave of attacks on the channel. At a time when his candidacy for the presidential election was not yet official, the initial question was whether he should remain on the air. Could his speech be considered that of a mere columnist? With his one-hour programme every day in prime time, didn’t he benefit from an exceptional sounding board that the other candidates were deprived of? In September 2021, he was invited by the CSA (Conseil supérieur de l’Audiovisuel or Superior Council for Audiovisual media) to withdraw from “Face à l’info.”
Once the Zemmour page had been turned—he no longer returned to the channel as a columnist, but as one of a number of political guests—the attention of the authorities on CNews did not let up. The channel found itself permanently in the sights of the public regulator. The comments made on its programmes—whether by columnists or guests on set—were severely scrutinised, and regularly gave rise to reprimands. Whether discussing the Second World War or COVID, the obsession with political correctness provides ample opportunity to track down any allegedly ‘deviant’ comments encouraged by the news channel.
Rima Abdul-Malak, former minister for culture in Élisabeth Borne’s government, took a dislike to CNews and had a hard time with the fact that it is still a place where free and iconoclastic speech can flourish. In two successive interviews, first with the newspaper Le Parisien and then in the columns of Le Monde, she directly attacked the channel and one of its successful mainstream programmes, the talk show “Touche pas à mon poste,” threatening to put pressure on the courts and ARCOM (the supervisory body that has since taken over from the CSA) not to renew the channel’s broadcasting licence: “When we arrive, in 2025, at the time of the analysis of their balance sheet for the renewal of their broadcasting licences, ARCOM will know how to look at how they have complied with these obligations.”
The Vivendi group, which owns the channel, was rightly outraged that the minister for culture should so openly assume that she wanted to set limits on freedom of expression. Unsurprisingly, left-wing MPs gave their support to the Minister, while right-wing MPs attacked her for “clearly stepping out of her role.” Since the incident, the Minister for Culture has left her post, but the sword of Damocles hanging over the head of CNews is the non-renewal of its broadcasting licences.
The constant and insistent pressure on CNEWS did not prevent the channel from continuing its inexorable progress. The truth is that Bolloré’s channel is one of the rare media spaces accessible to the public where an alternative discourse to the dominant narrative is permitted. It features a range of columnists and journalists from various organs of the conservative Right, including but not limited to Catholics: journalist Gabrielle Cluzel, editor-in-chief of the news website Boulevard Voltaire; journalist Aymeric Pourbaix, head of the magazine France Catholique; Alice Cordier, a feminist identitarian activist; Charlotte d’Ornellas, former journalist for Valeurs Actuelles … those people you can never find on any other channel in the French media landscape. The channel fills a void that no other audiovisual medium is willing to fill: that of a right-wing viewpoint that is uninhibited on issues of authority, security, immigration, history, or faith, ignoring the barriers erected between them by the right-wing parties or the ‘sanitary cordons’ of the system to give free rein to all sorts of politically incorrect figures.
In December 2023, CNews became the number one all-news channel, overtaking its rival BFM TV—the faithful sounding board for the official thinking promoted by Emmanuel Macron’s regime. It seemed inevitable that sooner or later the channel would have to pay for its boldness and success.
The attack came from the NGO Reporters Sans Frontières, which is supposed to “promote and defend the freedom to inform and be informed throughout the world,” according to its official website. Judging that the CNews channel had become a “media of opinion,” the NGO lodged an appeal with the Council of State—one of France’s highest judicial bodies, responsible for judging disputes between citizens and the administration. On Tuesday, February 13th, the Council of State issued an opinion ordering ARCOM to step up its monitoring of CNews, and to ensure “within six months” that CNews complies with its obligations “in terms of pluralism and independence of information.” The NGO’s secretary general, Christophe Deloire, welcomed this “historic decision for democracy and journalism.”
Since the publication of the press release by the Council of State, a tornado has awoken. The decision provoked astonishment and indignation in large sections of French opinion—not only on the Right in even the broadest sense of the term, but well beyond, because it has brought to light something that every honest person has been suspecting for years: the weight of censorship and the thought police on any possibility of expressing alternative opinions put on the Right in the French public sphere and media.
The Council of State explained that the media regulator would not only have to monitor the speaking time of political figures invited to appear on the channel—which is already the case—but will also have to monitor “the overall operating conditions” of CNews and “the characteristics of its programming.” From now on, the aim will be to compile files on journalists, contributors, and political columnists in order to determine which side they belong to and, if necessary, prevent them from speaking, even though CNews is a privately owned channel.
These actions—the state keeping a record of journalists’ opinions, controlling what they say, censorship—are not taking place in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, but in Emmanuel Macron’s France. And this time, censorship is no longer even masked, but is advancing openly, through a state court.
At the start of 2024, have the French thought police gone too far, at the risk of arousing the deep hostility of a public that, after several years of frequenting CNews, has acquired a taste for freedom of thought? In the land of Beaumarchais, we should remember the words of the barber Figaro, which have since become the motto of the newspaper of the same name: “Without the freedom to criticise, there is no flattering praise.” (Sans la liberté de blâmer, il n’est point d’éloge flatteur.)
In a forthcoming analysis, we’ll look at the reactions to the imposition of this trusteeship on CNews and the political upheaval it has caused.