Popular Conservative French news channel CNews — the Gallic version of GB News — has been fined €80,000 by the country’s media regulator for broadcasting negative viewpoints regarding migration and climate change without offering suitable commentary for balance — news of the regulatory intervention comes in the wake of research showing publicly funded media channels in the country overwhelmingly field left-wing guests and promote left-wing ideas.

The French Communications Regulation Authority, Arcom, imposed two financial penalties on CNews, for “failing to meet its obligations”.

Under French media regulations laid down in a 1986 law, all channels, whether public or private, must give equal airtime to people from different political parties during electoral periods.

One fine of €60,000 was given over a broadcast late last year, where two studio guests declared “immigration kills…without any reaction from the host or the other people present on set”, the media regulator wrote in its decision.

“The use of the formula ‘immigration kills’ by two guests is likely to represent people of immigrant origin, as a whole, as a deadly risk factor,” Arcom ruled, adding: “Such stigmatisation, which reduces immigrants to the status of dangerous people… is likely to incite hatred against them because of their race, nationality or ethnic origin and encourage discriminatory behaviour towards them.”

The other penalty of €20,000 was in light of another broadcast, in July 2023, when a guest stated: 

Anthropogenic climate change is a lie, a scam. At some point, we need to look at things scientifically; it’s not a law of science.

There has been global warming since the mid-19th century, but it follows a mini ice age … so the climate has always evolved and will continue to do so. But to explain that it’s because of humans, no, that’s a conspiracy.

“And why does it carry so much weight?”, the guest continued. “Because it justifies state intervention in our lives, and it also absolves the state from having to reduce its public spending. Elisabeth Borne [the then Prime Minister] announced that we’re going to spend €60 billion a year to fight against… against this so-called warming.”

“This way, the State says, ‘Well, I can’t make savings, there’s global warming.’ It’s very convenient, and it allows intervention in the agenda, in people’s lives, housing, transport, industry, agriculture, and it’s… for me, it’s a form of totalitarianism. As a liberal economist, it’s a form of totalitarianism.”

Again, Arcom ruled that there had been no attempt at balance.

“The participant was thus able to express a controversial thesis not verified by established scientific data without the position he defended being put into perspective and without any contradiction on this subject being expressed following these remarks,” the regulator said. 

CNews, which is part of the Canal+ group owned by the billionaire industrialist Vincent Bolloré, has in recent years seen viewing figures soar.

Dubbed by critics “the French Fox News”, it features rowdy debate shows dealing with issues like immigration and crime, which mainstream channels often choose to ignore. According to the channel’s director general, Serge Nedjar, while these subjects were “for a very, very long time… classed as being the topics of the far right”, today they are “what interests 80% of French people”

News of the regulator’s intervention follows the French Council of State — the country’s highest administrative court — overturning an initial decision by the media regulator not to act against CNews.

Last year, Arcom’s president, Roch-Olivier Maistre, argued that CNews “strictly respected political pluralism” in terms of the amount of speaking time given to politicians. While acknowledging that it was “becoming an opinion channel” on the lines of conservative Fox News in the US, he went on to say that it was not the regulator’s job to look at the channel’s commentators.

However, in February 2024, a case brought by campaign group Reporters sans frontières (RSF) argued that the Canal+ channel had breached its legal obligations, and that Arcom had ignored repeated calls for it to remind the news channel of its obligation to ensure the “honesty, independence and pluralism” of its coverage.

The judge in the case subsequently criticised Arcom for limiting its ruling to the compliance issue over how much airtime had been given to political figures, rather than examining whether the channel was presenting true diversity of thought and opinion, and gave it six months to examine whether CNews was complying with its obligations to ensure “balanced and independent” journalism.

Using vague and capacious language, the State Council went on to say that the regulator should assess news independence “in terms of the channel’s operating conditions and programming characteristics”.

In a statement, Arcom welcomed the decision, which effectively expands what is currently considered ‘editorial content’ for regulatory purposes, to include contributions from pundits as well as politicians.

“With this renewed interpretation of the 1986 law,” Arcom said, “the Council of State strengthens the capacity of control by the regulator of the obligations of these media in terms of honesty, pluralism and independence of information, while respecting their editorial freedom.”

RSF itself described the ruling as a “turning point in the enforcement of news media pluralism and independence in France”. According to secretary-general Christophe Deloire, “it is not any individual editorial line that is at stake, but our ability to access a diversity of facts and opinion”.

However, others expressed concern at the ruling. Speaking on CNews following the hearing, journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert described the court’s decision as “very serious, unbelievable”, saying France was “heading, bit by bit, towards a government of judges”.

Eugenié Bastié, a regular contributor to CNews, questioned how the tighter controls would be applied. “Will commentators have to declare who they vote for?” she asked on X.

Meanwhile Eric Ciotti, head of the conservative Republicans party, spoke of an “inquisition” into the opinions of commentators and journalists.

All of which leaves open the question of whether the Council of State’s ostensibly reasonable “upstream” ruling — and RSF’s ostensibly reasonable interpretation of that ruling’s de jure significance — might not end up getting weaponised for “downstream” political purposes.

It’s a timely question, not least because news of CNews’s financial sanction by a regulator with a now substantially expanded purview comes in the wake of research which alleged French media broadcasters are illegally discriminating against those on the political Right.

According to the Thomas More Institute report, published in May, publicly funded television and radio channels in the country are overwhelmingly fielding left-wing guests and promoting left-wing ideas, despite having a legal obligation to be politically balanced in their coverage.

Analysing a list of 587 guests who appeared on France’s most prominent publicly funded media between February 19th to 24th, 2024, researchers found about half of them could be considered politically neutral, 25 per cent fell under the “Socialist and progressive” label, while another 21 per cent of the guests were viewed as holding a “Macronist” Liberal point of view. By contrast, just 4 per cent — or 26 people — were classified as leaning to the Right.

Of those brought on to discuss climate and ecology, 65.6 per cent held pro-green agenda views, while 57 per cent expressed disapproval for politicians deemed to be to the Right of Macron. The research team added that 100 per cent of guests asked about the issue of diversity and multiculturalism expressed approval of these political projects and the ideological precepts underpinning them.

The parallels here with the UK broadcast landscape aren’t difficult to discern. Since its formation in 2021, the right-wing “insurgent” channel GB News has repeatedly been investigated by media regulator Ofcom for alleged breaches of due impartiality rules, while left-leaning mainstream media continue to operate with apparent impunity.

In March 2024, for instance, the channel was reprimanded for breaching Rule 5.3. of the Broadcasting Code, which bans politicians from acting as newsreaders or news presenters.

According to Ofcom, GB News blurred the distinction between news programmes — which must be strictly impartial — and current affairs discussion — which need not be — when it allowed the then Tory MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esther McVey and Philip Davies to host current-affairs shows.

Curiously, however, when the then BBC presenter Emily Maitlis co-opted the introductory sequence to the channel’s flagship news programme, Newsnight, during the first national Covid lockdown of May 2020, delivering an impassioned, straight-to-camera harangue of the Conservative government over the “blind loyalty” it had shown towards a government advisor who, in her opinion, had broken lockdown rules, Ofcom decided no regulatory action was required.

The regulator was also happy to clear Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow in 2019, after he claimed he had “never seen so many white people in one place” while describing a pro-Brexit protest during an hour-long live news programme — this despite Snow’s apparent iplication (i.e., that a person’s race dictates their views on Brexit) following a discussion involving the author Will Self, who referred to “ethnic nationalism” in the context of Brexit.

But what, meanwhile, of our Gallic cousins, whom we left pondering the findings of the bombshell Thomas More Institute report a few short paragraphs ago? 

Will we see a more consistent application of the broadcasting sector’s regulatory principles on the other side of the English Channel? 

Might Arcom, as a nominally independent public authority, consider these research findings in light of the precedent it established in the case of conservative channel CNews before then immediately launching a similarly forensic analysis into the “content pluralism” and “programming characteristics” of the country’s left-leaning, publicly funded media?

… the first step on the road towards “overthrowing” a system is to “underthrow” its culture

Anyone naïve and Panglossian enough to believe that the answer to these questions is “yes”, would do well to check their ideologically inculcated liberal instinct to frown with distaste at the thought of yet another ghastly right-wing disinformation enthusiast tilting at windmills, and remind themselves of the acute contemporary relevance for the Western Left of the Gramscian phrase “war of position”.

As the Italian Marxist reminds us in his hugely influential Prison Notebooks (1947), during the long struggle for control of civil society — indeed, for common-sense itself — “the state was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks”. Or, as his contemporary acolytes in England, France, and across the West more generally might put it, the first step on the road towards “overthrowing” a system is to “underthrow” its culture.