The Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority is giving the channel formal notice for two programs broadcast at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022.
When, on February 1, Ivan Rioufol declared on CNews that the Warsaw ghetto, “it was, first of all, a hygienist place”, “a place which was made to preserve typhus”, nobody, on the set of the program of Pascal Praud “The hour of the pros”, had not found to react to the remarks of the editorialist of Figaro. On social networks, on the other hand, he had caused indignation (Bernard-Henri Lévy, Anne Hidalgo, SOS Racisme, the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism, etc.). After examining the sequence, the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (Arcom) decided on May 10 to put the channel on notice twice, for two different reasons. This decision was published inOfficial Journal on May 20.
First, for the regulatory body, CNews was guilty of a breach of “the obligation of honesty and rigor in the presentation and processing of information”, to which it is bound by its agreement (the regulatory text that binds it). In its decision, Arcom recalls that “there is consensus within the scientific community to consider that the health reasons put forward by Nazi Germany to justify the creation of the Warsaw ghetto in October 1940 were a pretext aimed at the regrouping of the Jews, the first stage of the the their extermination.
In reaction to the storm of tweets that the sequence had aroused, Ivan Rioufol had reacted on the social network: “For my lynchers, I repeat: Nazi hygienist served as a pretext for the segregation of the Jews, their massacre and at worst totalitarianism. I will not allow myself to be insulted by counterfeiters and fools. »
A sanction procedure in the event of a repeat offense
Moreover, since, that day, neither the presenter of “L’heure des pros” nor any of the guests gathered on the set reacted to this remark likely to be qualified as revisionist, the authority chaired by Roch -Olivier Maistre considers the “lack of control of the antenna” characterized, hence the second formal notice. In the event of a repeat offense on the same grounds of law – “control of the antenna” and “breach of honesty of information” -, CNews exposes itself to the opening of a sanction procedure which can go up to the payment of a fine, suspension of service, of a program or of an advertising slot, or even a reduction in the duration of its authorization to broadcast.
