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ER Editor: Journalist Helene de Lauzun also put this out earlier this month —
French Public Media Put in the Dock
Of note on the young MP, Charles Alloncle, who has gone to bat for this cause of corruption in French public media yet received massive invective for his efforts —
Over the weeks, Alloncle has emerged as one of the rising figures of the French conservative Right. Previously little known, this MP—a member of Éric Ciotti’s party, the Union of the Right for the Republic (Union des Droites pour la République, or UDR, allied with the Rassemblement National)—has commanded respect through his tenacity, his resilience in the face of attacks from the Left, and his determination not to waver from the public interest mission he had set himself. The left-wing daily Libération described him as a “cardboard Zola”, in a reverse reference to the novelist who spearheaded the press campaign against the injustice of Dreyfus’ conviction in 1898. Media mogul Xavier Niel, for his part, described him as a “clown” and his committee as “a circus”. The progressive weekly Le Nouvel Obs saw his venture as a dangerous “laboratory for the far right.” Every form of invective was deemed acceptable to destabilise the man who, for the first time, demonstrated an unshakeable determination to take on the impregnable fortress that is the French public media.
On the Right, the emergence of a promising figure is being welcomed, one who combines the combativeness of RN (Marine Le Pen’s party) activists with the respectability of the old-school right-wing government establishment.
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Major Victory for the French Right: Scandal of State Media Revealed
The parliamentary probe into French public broadcasting is a symbolic victory, finally exposing the Left’s long-held ideological monopoly over the public media sphere.
HELENE de LAUZUN for EUROPEAN CONSERVATIVE
After months of intense battle, the work of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into French public media has come to an end.
View of the Radio France headquarters in Paris on July 8, 2025. JOEL SAGET / AFP
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Following a scandal revealed by the conservative magazine L’Incorrect, which had access to a conversation between public service journalists openly admitting to using their airtime and media influence to promote their candidates and their political agenda—a left-wing one—an investigation was launched at the initiative of the UDR (Union of the Right for the Republic, allied with the Rassemblement National) to determine the extent to which public radio and television journalists had been compromised.
The four-month investigation was punctuated by crises and incidents, revealing the reluctance of journalists and officials from public entities to cooperate and expose their system of financial abuse and ideological corruption. Responsibility for the outbursts and clashes was placed squarely on the shoulders of the commission’s rapporteur, MP Charles Alloncle, who proved to be exceptionally tenacious in this titanic struggle.
The commission’s work concluded on April 8th, but a major uncertainty remained: would the deputies choose to make its findings public, or would they bow to the demand for silence made by the left? A closed-door vote by the commission was held on this matter on Monday, April 27th, following a debate lasting more than four hours. (ER: It’s remarkable that such a question, whether to make these findings public, would even need to be asked, let alone debated and voted on.)
The commission members voted 12 in favour, 10 against, with eight abstentions. The nearly 400-page report “will be made public on May 4,” announced the committee chair, Horizons MP Jérémie Patrier-Leitus. The transcripts and videos of the approximately 70 hearings, which have already been published, will remain accessible online and available for everyone to view.
Left-wing lawmakers have been pressing in recent weeks to ensure the report is not published and that all documents collected as part of the parliamentary inquiry are destroyed. The legal option existed but would have constituted a massive democratic scandal. This is undoubtedly what prompted the pro-Macron members of the committee to abstain in the final vote: voting for censorship alongside the Left would have exposed them to inevitable unpopularity and would have made them ostensibly complicit in a public scandal.
The committee chair, who belongs to the presidential camp, thus justified his abstention by citing his love of free speech and his rejection of methods he deems “far-right”—even though, in this instance, the call for censorship came from the Left. Socialists, Greens, and members of La France Insoumise (LFI) denounced the report as “deceptive,” “biased,” “malicious,” and “contradictory” and intend to dismantle the document “line by line” in upcoming proceedings, including by publishing a “counter-report”—a sign that the final vote by no means marks the end of the clashes.
The final document includes 80 recommendations. Among them are proposals to merge channels and to scrap certain controversial and costly projects funded by public money, such as the station Mouv’, a radio station dedicated to hip-hop.
MP Alloncle also proposes subjecting public television and radio figures to a commitment to neutrality and impartiality, including public statements and behaviour outside their official duties—a response to the scandal revealed by L’Incorrect, which involved a semi-public conversation held in a café. He also wishes to return to the practice of having the heads of France Télévisions and Radio France appointed by the president of the republic. Alloncle proposes a comprehensive set of budget cuts aimed at generating over one billion euros in annual savings, representing a quarter of the funds allocated by the state to public broadcasting. He would like to use this sum for heritage preservation and to reduce the national debt.
The report is not binding but could lead to a bill that would be presented to lawmakers at the end of June, during the UDR group’s parliamentary initiative day.
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