Using Orwellian newspeak, Reporters Without Borders is seeking to censor and restrict journalists with right-wing conservative views from French television.
“Reporters Without Borders was created to defend pluralism. Today, it is an enemy of pluralism,” says Robert Ménard, a cofounder and long-time chief of Reporters without Borders, or Reporters sans frontières (RSF).
Ménard is now the mayor of Béziers, a city of some 90,000 inhabitants in southern France, where he was initially elected with the support of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.
He was reacting to a breakthrough ruling by the Council of State, which is France’s highest administrative court, on Feb. 14. This ruling says that the country’s bureaucratic media authority ARCOM should closely monitor the plurality of views expressed on each TV channel.
Such obligation of plurality is enshrined in French law and is set as a condition for broadcasters to be given free slots on the digital terrestrial television network. What is new, however, is that the Council of State now says that ARCOM should monitor not only the exact television time granted to politicians of different parties on each channel but also classify all commentators and guests according to their views to ensure pluralism of views is also respected among them.