There will be a first vote in the National Assembly, Friday May 24, on the government’s project which wants to merge Radio France, France televisions and the INA audiovisual archives. Uncertainty still hangs over the fate of France Médias Monde, of which RFI is a part. Is public broadcasting in danger, as the many employees who will be on strike on Thursday and Friday think? Interview with media historian Alexis Lévrier, lecturer at the University of Reims and author of the book Jupiter and Mercury: presidential power in the face of the presspublished by Les petits matins.
RFI: We’ve been talking about this project for a long time. It is regularly put back on the table. Why is he coming back now?
Alexis Lévrier: This is actually quite a complex question, because we had the impression that since Covid-19, this reform and merger project was somewhat put aside, considered unrealizable. This project is a bit of an Arlesian project. We were already talking about it under Nicolas Sarkozy, about a French-style BBC, and it still looks like a French-style ORTF, a return to this ultra-centralized structure. Unfortunately, Emmanuel Macron gives in a little to this temptation of presidents who wanted to embody a very strong, very centralized power and who want to have a form of direct or indirect supervision over the public media. That’s still a lot like what it looks like.
Especially since at the start of his first five-year term, Emmanuel Macron accompanied the announcement of this future merger with very strong criticism of the public media. He spoke of “ shame for our fellow citizens », he questioned the content, the programs, the leaders, everyone.
Rachida Dati, who is today Minister of Culture, took up this project and she too accompanied it with criticism of the public media, which she accuses of a lack of pluralism. She also appeared in Vincent Bolloré’s media, including in the JDD by Geoffroy Lejeune, to say that there was a problem of pluralism in the public media. So, we can clearly see that this reform reflects a temptation to take control of the public media. And that is why it is very worrying.
However, you told us, this type of model already existed, with the ORTF. What caused its end at the time?
It is at the end of the Gaullo-Pompidolian era. It was the death of Georges Pompidou which led, at the time, to a very strong criticism of what public broadcasting meant directly under the heel of the State, “the voice of France”, as the saying goes. Georges Pompidou. But this voice of France led public service journalists to silence, for example, the president’s illness which was obvious to all French people. And all this came to fruition, in April 1974: the ORTF was unable to deal with the death of the president because it was taken by surprise, it had not prepared anything.
It was to put an end to this unbearable state supervision over public broadcasting that Valéry Giscard d’Estaing announced his desire to dismantle the ORTF, to give more autonomy to each of its channels. It was done in pain. The temptation to control has never gone away. But from the moment you give a little autonomy to each channel, control is less direct and each public media can regain a form of independence. And this is what we are witnessing.
And this is precisely what many journalists and journalist companies have been emphasizing since this reform project was put forward by the government. You mentioned earlier the term “ dangerous », it is also the one which is used by many journalists from Radio France who denounce this morning a merger that they consider demagogic, ineffective and dangerous. Is public broadcasting actually in danger? ?
Of course. And besides, this is not only a French phenomenon, throughout the world, in all liberal democracies, public broadcasting is called into question in its functioning, with criticism and sometimes the abolition of the license fee, such as at our place.
The license fee was what financed public broadcasting with a protected budget. And that hasn’t been the case since last year.
This is no longer the case and this is one of the difficulties. To the extent that what had been envisaged as a means of compensating for this end of the fee – a fraction of the VAT – will end at the end of 2025, we must jointly consider maintaining funding for public broadcasting and this merger . And quite explicitly, the government and the majority deputies are holding out to public broadcasting that this funding will be maintained on the condition that they accept the merger and we can clearly see the whole problem there.
This is because initially, financing was weakened with the end of the fee. And secondly, it is the very existence of public media, or at least their capacity to produce quality journalism, independent of power, which is called into question. And this is particularly worrying. We really have the impression of a return to the 60s and 70s and we know that Emmanuel Macron has this nostalgia for “Jupiterian” presidents, presidents who embodied very strong power, and in particular General de Gaulle.
There are similar projects in other countries, particularly in Europe. Does it work ?
Difficultly. From the moment you no longer have a public broadcaster that is autonomous in its financing, its existence is threatened and we see this phenomenon everywhere. Even the BBC, which is considered an example, has had to accept cuts in staff numbers and cuts in funding. So everywhere, even in countries where a fee remains, the question of long-term financing is threatened.
And we see that this is accompanied by private media – and often the far right – by very strong criticism of public media, with the same criticism everywhere: that is to say that the public media would be leftist, would be Islamist, would be “wokist”. We saw this in Hungary, we saw this in Italy and it often comes from the far right which uses these criticisms to create an atmosphere which prepares its arrival to power. And what we see everywhere is that once it is in power, the far right establishes total control over the public media.
This is precisely something that worries many people, the rise of populism that we observe almost everywhere in Europe and which would become more accentuated, representing an additional threat to a public audiovisual sector united under the direction of a single person…
Yes, and we have the impression that Emmanuel Macron, despite himself of course, is carrying out the far-right agenda for him. Because the extreme right dreams of having a public broadcaster in its hands, which would be a propaganda tool without comparison, of formidable effectiveness.
This merger will be effective in 2026, the year preceding the presidential election. Let’s imagine that a far-right leader comes to power, as is unfortunately possible, that would mean that there would be a merger of public broadcasting, a single leader who would answer for his authority. Even if his appointment will be made by Arcom, supervision will be obvious, and the extreme right will be able to have a propaganda tool both on the radio waves and on television frequencies, to disseminate its ideology. This is what happened in Hungary and to a lesser extent, this is what is happening in Italy today.