The Minister of Culture, Catherine Pégard, announced this Friday “concrete measures from this summer” by decree, to better evaluate the impartiality of public broadcasting and better respond to citizens’ “complaints”, after the handover of a report the same day to the regulator, Arcom. This report was requested by Arcom following the controversy triggered by the video showing two journalists speaking on the public service, Thomas Legrand and Patrick Cohen, discussing privately in a Parisian restaurant with PS officials.
The controversy led to the opening of a commission of inquiry of the National Assembly, where France Télévisions and Radio France were subjected to a heavy fire of criticism from its rapporteur, the UDR deputy Charles Alloncle, allied to the RN, and himself attacked for his methods described as “inquisitorial” by his detractors.
An internal complaints handling mechanism
In this context, the Minister of Culture “announces the immediate initiation of work to modify the specifications of France Télévisions, Radio France and France Médias Monde”, indicates a press release from the Ministry of Culture.
These decrees will aim in particular to establish an annual public barometer of impartiality, create a charter for each company formalizing their commitments or set up an internal mechanism for handling complaints for citizens.
A little earlier, the honorary vice-president of the Council of State, Bruno Lasserre, submitted a report containing 17 measures, including the obligation for public service media to adopt a more robust editorial charter than what currently exists, based on the “editorial guidelines” model. from the BBC in the United Kingdom.
According to him, “an accessible, simple collection (…) something like that that you can touch with your finger” is needed, he underlined, brandishing the manual and specifying that it has “450 pages”.
