French regulator to look into CNews channel after ‘opinion media’ allegation

France’s highest administrative court has given the country’s media regulator six months to examine whether the television channel CNews is conforming to rules on balanced and independent journalism.

Tuesday’s ruling was a victory for the press freedom organisation Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), which had asked the state council to overturn the regulator Arcom’s refusal to investigate the channel, described by critics as the “French Fox News”.

RSF accused CNews of having become “opinion media” and referred its complaint to the court after it said Arcom had ignored repeated calls for it to remind the news channel of its obligation to ensure the “honesty, independence and pluralism” of its coverage.

CNews, which is part of the Canal+ group owned by the billionaire industrialist Vincent Bolloré, has seen viewing figures soar with a mix of rowdy debate shows often focusing on issues such as immigration and crime.

France’s system of TV regulation means that all channels must give equal airtime to figures from different political parties in electoral periods.

However, the state council went further, calling on the regulator to take into account the diversity of thought and opinion represented by all participants in programmes broadcast, including columnists, presenters and guests. It also ordered Arcom to look at the channel’s “operating conditions and programming characteristics”.

Christophe Deloire, RSF’s secretary general, described the decision as a “historic victory … for democracy and journalism”.

“Our objecting in fighting for the pluralism and independence of information is simply to defend democracy. It’s not a question of this or that editorial line, but the ability of citizens to access a diversity of facts and opinions. This is a matter of urgency,” Deloire wrote on X.

“The state council’s landmark decision will certainly change the situation by prompting the audiovisual regulator to finally rise to the challenge. We have been calling for the regulator to exercise its powers for almost 10 years.”

In 2021, the media regulator fined CNews €200,000 for broadcasting comments by the far-right pundit Éric Zemmour on the asylum system, which it deemed hate speech. Zemmour, who has criminal convictions for racial and religious hate speech, was a nightly star on the channel before he stood in the 2022 presidential election, and is still a regular guest.

Viewing figures for last December showed that CNews had become France’s most watched information channel, ahead of the rolling news channel BFMTV, for the first time since its creation.

CNews has denied any political affiliation and rejects any comparison with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.

“We are not affiliated to any party, or any politician, and we’re lightyears away from that,” Serge Nedjar, the channel’s director general, told the Guardian in 2021.

“We feature all topics, even those seen as the most flammable,” Nedjar said. “We talk about insecurity, immigration, identity – these are subjects which for a very, very long time were classed as being the topics of the far right. But today these topics are what interests 80% of French people. So we feature all topics and we invite everyone [from all political parties] into the studio.”

In February 2023, during a conference at Sciences-Po university’s journalism college, Roch-Olivier Maistre, the president of Arcom, said the regulator had closely monitored the channel’s output and that it “strictly respects political pluralism” in terms of the amount of speaking time given to politicians. While acknowledging the channel was verging on becoming “an opinion channel”, he said it was not the regulator’s job to look at the channel’s commentators.

“CNews has become something of a novelty in our media landscape, resembling the kind of opinion channel that exists in other countries. Particularly in the United States. We often talk about the French Fox News. It’s an interesting case,” Maistre told students. The Guardian