The Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom) announced on Wednesday January 11 the renewal of Marie-Christine Saragosse as head of France Médias Monde for an additional five years. Appointed for the first time in 2012, this is her third term at the head of the public audiovisual group outside France, which oversees our RFI radio station, the France 24 television channel and the Arabic-language radio station Monte-Carlo Doualiya ( MCD).
Reappointing Marie-Christine Saragosse as head of France Médias Monde is a choice. Arcom makes no secret of it: stability in a difficult context on several counts, financial and geopolitical in particular. Starting with that of the financing of public broadcasting, upset by the abolition in 2022 of the “venerable” fee. She was nearly 90 years old and is being replaced for the time being by a reassignment of a percentage of VAT.
With a major challenge for RFI, MCD and France 24 and their president: to preserve “ the bond of trust “with listeners and viewers” who passed – these are the words of Marie-Christine Saragosse – by ” free and independent international information “.
Which could be summed up as follows: public media yes, state media no. While RFI and France 24 have been banned in Mali since April, in a context of strong tensions between Paris and Bamako. RFI having also been suspended in Burkina Faso in December.
Context in which the regulatory authority chose ” to focus on the experience acquired at the head of the group by Marie-Christine Saragosse » since her first appointment in 2012. It is up to her to hire « a new phase of its digital development », FMM’s Achilles’ heel for the candidates who faced him.
Finally, Arcom calls for a strengthening of the ” social dialogue in a group that employs 1,750 people and hundreds of correspondents around the world.