Arcom indicated on Wednesday, January 4 that it had invoked the independent rapporteur, member of the State Council (Conseil d’Etat), concerning the anti-Muslim remarks made by journalist Jean-Claude Dassier, columnist for CNews, former CEO of LCI and ex-president of OM, on the air of the Canal+ group news channel on Tuesday, December 27 and for which the regulator was itself invoked last week (Satellifacts, January 2). This procedure opens the way to a possible sanction of the news channel, depending on whether or not the State Council decides to initiate proceedings and investigate the case.
The file transmitted to the rapporteur relates to the sequence during which Jean-Claude Dassier declared: "Muslims, they don't give a damn about the Republic, they don't even know what the word means," as well as a second in which another speaker, the essayist Laurent Ozon, praised the merits of "remigration," said Arcom. These remarks were made during a debate on juvenile delinquency on the program La Belle Equipe, presented by Barbara Klein.
Not contradicted on-set, they caused an uproar. The president of SOS Racisme, Dominique Sopo, thus announced two days later his intention to take legal action while the presenter of La Belle Équipe, Barbara Klein, implicated, had dissociated herself from her columnist in the name of the channel and its editorial staff. On January 2, in L'Opinion, Manuel Bompard, LFI-Nupes deputy from Marseille and new boss of LFI, also confided in considering invoking the public prosecutor "in view of the inaction of Arcom in the face of these provocations."
CNews and C8, another channel of the Canal+ group, regularly sanctioned
Arcom is regularly invoked for remarks made on CNews and C8, another channel of the Canal + group. In 2021, the regulator had already fined CNews 200,000 euros for comments made by Eric Zemmour on unaccompanied minors in Face à l'info (Satellifacts, July 13, 2022). In 2017, C8 was fined 3 million euros by the former CSA for broadcasting a hoax deemed homophobic in the show hosted and produced by Cyril Hanouna Touche pas à mon poste ! (TPMP), i.e. one of the heaviest sanctions ever imposed, confirmed by the State Council in 2020 (Satellifacts, September 29, 2020). The show has also been deprived of advertising slots for 3 weeks in June 2017, to sanction two contentious sequences broadcast at the end of 2016 (Satellifacts, June 8, 2017).
Recently, Arcom transmitted to the State Council a file relating to a controversial sequence in TPMP between Cyril Hanouna and the deputy LFI Louis Boyard (Satellifacts, November 17) and put C8 in default for the declarations, in the same program, from the host and producer on the murder of young Lola (Satellifacts, November 18).