CNews is the country’s most-watched 24-hours TV “news” station but it scarcely reports the news. It provides a running commentary of loud-mouthed opinion.
Emmanuel Macron is a charlatan; the Left is wicked; immigrants are mostly violent criminals; Donald Trump is a breath of fresh air; Vladimir Putin has some faults but many qualities; France is swamped with crime because of the moral weakness of the ruling elite.
Ten days ago one of CNews' star presenters, Jean-Marc Morandini, abandoned his final appeal against a ten-year-old charge of “corruption of minors”. After a decade in which Morandini insisted that he was the victim of a “plot”, he apologised for sending sexual messages to teenage boys and pleaded for a “second chance”.
The confessed sex-offender is still the main morning presenter on CNews.
Several of his fellow presenters have protested. All French political parties are boycotting his show – including the Far Right Rassemblement National, which originally attempted to evade a decision.
The bosses of CNews and its hard-right, ultra-Catholic billionaire owner, Vincent Bolloré, have refused – so far – to remove Morandini from the channel. Their indulgence, contrasting with the moral certainties that they normally proclaim, has provoked a crisis within Bolloré’s media empire.
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Bolloré’s own Sunday newspaper, the Journal du Dimanche, published a brief commentary last weekend: “The JDD is on the side of the victims, who are profoundly upset that Jean-Marc Morandini is still on air.”
The far-right, Catholic-nationalist politician, Philippe de Villiers, who has a weekly show on CNews, responded on social media: “I agree with the editors of JDD”.
Two of CNews' star presenters, Pascal Praud and Laurence Ferrari have made similar complaints. They were shamed into doing so by another CNews star, Sonia Mabrouk.
A Socialist politician, Jérome Guedj, asked her about Morandini during a live interview about the state budget. To her credit she criticised, on air, her bosses’ decision to keep him.
In retaliation, CNews threatened to fire her. She is expected to leave the channel soon.
How long can Bolloré and the CNews hierarchy keep up this unaccustomed leniency towards the criminal classes ? Not long, I expect.
They have a problem, however. Morandini is not the only alleged wrong-doer in the Bolloré media empire (which also includes Canal Plus).
The controversial radio presenter Sébastien Cauet was hired to work on Bolloré’s Europe 2 station after he was placed under formal investigation for rape and sexual assault. He denies the accusations.
Thomas Bauder, director of information at CNews, was recently sentenced to four months in jail, sentence suspended, after being found guilty of repeated violence towards his children. He is appealing.
The Bolloré empire says that it believes in the principle of the “presumption of innocence” until an accused is finally proven guilty. That seems reasonable but it jars with CNews’ rush to political judgement in all other cases of crime and violence in France.
In Morandini’s case, the presumption of innocence is over. He withdrew his appeal to the court of Cassation last month after being found guilty on appeal last March of pestering teenage boys for sexual images when they were under his authority as a TV producer. He was given a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined €20,000.
After insisting for ten years that the boys were lying, Morandini issued a statement which, in effect, admitted the crime and asked for forgiveness and a “second chance”.
Why are Bolloré and the bosses of his media empire still refusing to fire him?
There is something Trumpian about Vincent Bolloré. Both billionaires claim to represent a superior moral universe. Both believe that they are immune to facts or normal rules of decency or justice.
Insiders speak of a repressive and absolutist culture at CNews, where all nuance or retreat is seen as weakness.
The octogenarian lawyer and writer Philippe Bilger was long a rare semi-contradictory voice on CNews. He was evicted from the channel last week.
He told Le Monde: “I am deeply relieved to no longer belong to this opinions channel where I was once proud to represent the letter “s” at the end of the word ‘opinions’…”
“There is in this channel …a totalitarian philosophy, a single way of thinking on certain subjects, a stifling atmosphere that appalled me.”
This cynical model - the Fox News model - has allowed CNews to overtake BFMTV as the most popular 24-hours news channel in France. Vincent Bolloré’s aim is not to make money (he has plenty) but to rewire the French political mind.
Either way, it’s difficult to see why he thinks that it’s a good idea to have each weekday morning of his flagship TV channel presented by a sex offender.
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