The Cultural Affairs and Education Committee of the National Assembly decided, Tuesday, November 10, to classify, by 28 votes to 25, the petition calling to "remove CNews from French broadcasting", which collected more than a million signatures on the National Assembly website. The deputies rejected the organization of a debate in the hemicycle.
The RN, UDR, LR and Horizons voted for the classification of the petition, according to the minutes of the meeting. On the side of votes against, and those in favor of the organization of a debate, we find, unsurprisingly, the left-wing groups (LFI, PS, GDR and Les Ecologistes), but also the MoDem, while the EPR group, that of the presidential Renaissance party, has divided.
According to the National Assembly website, there remains one avenue for supporters of the organization of this debate: a deputy can make a request to the Conference of Presidents, "within eight days following the classification decision by the commission." If a debate were organized, it would not be followed by a vote.
“I am listening to citizens and hope that the petitions can lead, when they collect so many signatures, to a debate in the hemicycle,” commented Yaël Braun-Pivet to franceinfo after the vote in committee. “This petition has been closed, I take note of it,” reacted the Minister of Culture, Catherine Pgard, during questions to the government in the Assembly.
“We are not by Arcom”
From the start of the discussions in committee on Tuesday, the Les Républicains deputy Alexandre Portier, president of the committee and rapporteur of the petition, had pleaded to classify it, considering that it did not fall within the competence of the committee: "We are not Arcom". He proposed organizing a broader debate on press freedom and media regulation, and said he submitted the idea to Yaël Braun-Pivet.
Lively exchanges took place between the members of the commission. LFI deputy Aymeric Caron, former journalist for iTélé, now CNews, denounced a “promotional tool of the extreme right which continuously vomits on Muslims and immigrants”. “It’s a problem of rights, not a problem of freedom of expression,” he insisted, calling for a debate on the channel’s compliance with its obligations. RN MP Caroline Parmentier denounced “this obsession with censorship carried by the left and the far left”, accusing them of wanting to silence any media that contradicts them.
Launched in June by an individual on the Assembly platform, the petition compares the news channel to "a propaganda machine" and criticizes it in particular for racist sequences. She calls for the withdrawal of the CNews frequency on TNT and the closure of the Bolloré group channel. The number of signatories took off after the racist attack in Trappes on October 23, notably crossing the threshold of 500,000 signatures on November 2, and one million on Sunday.
Of the three petitions having previously crossed the threshold of 500,000 signatures, only the one against the Duplomb law led to a debate in the hemicycle. The other two, against the proposed Yadan law on anti-Semitism and against a text establishing a presumption of legitimate use of firearms by the police, were closed, the deputies considering in particular that a debate would duplicate the examination of legislative texts in Parliament.
