Our Culture Minister is certainly not having a good week. After being charged with corruption in the Renault case, and with the Paris Public Prosecutor's Office receiving two new reports regarding "omissions" in her asset declaration, Rachida Dati is now reeling from the failure of the audiovisual bill, rejected this Monday by the National Assembly.This reform, championed by Senator Laurent Lafon, has become a real personal battle for Rachida Dati,
Last October, debates on this bill, supported by Prime Minister François Bayrou, sent the Culture Minister flying off the handle.She even went so far as to threaten to "strike" an administrator of the National Assembly. Within this government, it's clear that both workers and institutions are equally disrespected.
The central point of the bill is the proposal to create a holding company, "France Médias," 100% owned by the State, overseeing France Télévisions, Radio France, and Ina.Its role would be to define strategy, accelerate collaborations, and optimise the allocation of resources among the three groups.
Born from a senatorial report a decade ago, this holding company project is not new. It was championed in 2019 by Minister Franck Riester, interrupted by the COVID crisis, then revived after Rachida Dati's appointment, before being halted again by the dissolution of the National Assembly in June 2024. The text is now dubbed the "cursed reform."
The government, for its part, is persistent, despite opposition from unions.Rachida Dati, for her part, defends the creation of this holding company as a "French-style BBC," capable of competing with Netflix. Is that really the primary goal of public broadcasting? In reality, such a structure would facilitate the creation of subsidiaries and, according to unionists, has all the characteristics of a merger. Such an operation would, unsurprisingly, lead to cuts in resources, and thus a direct attack on the jobs of 16,000 employees.
However, public broadcasting has already seen its budget cut by 80 million euros between 2024 and 2025. This is not enough for Macron.Rachida Dati nevertheless promises that the reform's "purpose is not to save money," but who can still believe the government's word? This is a real attack on media independence and the plurality of information. Undoubtedly, the president of this holding company will be subject to political and economic pressures, far from any supposed media freedom.
Yet we know how much the media can influence political life. We have striking examples in the United States and Russia, where the control exercised by the political class over the press and television leaves no room for contradictory debate and fuels the spread of far-right ideas, even manipulating elections.We are not surprised that Macron's France is following the same path. Already dominated by the Bolloré empire (whose grip extends to over 50 media outlets), the future of French broadcasting is more than alarming. There is no doubt about the desire to confiscate all its independence, for the benefit of increasingly uninhibited racist and nationalist rhetoric.
In response, the main union of Radio France launched an unlimited strike movement on Thursday against this text, which it considers extremely dangerous.At France Télévisions and Ina, unions called for a strike last Monday. Many parliamentarians, mostly from the left, organised against the text, with the tabling of a prior rejection motion by Cyrielle Châtelain, an ecologist deputy. The purpose of this measure, provided for in Article 91, paragraph 5 of the National Assembly's Rules of Procedure, is to "recognise that the proposed text is contrary to one or more constitutional provisions or to decide that there is no need to deliberate." The adoption of a prior rejection motion therefore leads to the rejection of the text by the National Assembly.
Last Monday, the motion to reject was thus voted by 94 votes to 38. This is a real defeat for Rachida Dati, abandoned by the deputies of the presidential majority who were conspicuously absent.Clémence Guetté, LFI-NFP deputy, hails a "victory for the French people, which preserves the independence of radio and television channels." Now, the bill must go through the entire parliamentary shuttle again and therefore returns to the Senate, before perhaps being re-examined by the Assembly at the end of the summer.
In the meantime, Dati, resign!
Illustration image: "Rachida Dati. Photo officielle de la Ministre de la culture en janvier 2024.", photograph by Laurent Vu / Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (CC BY-SA 3.0 FR)
English (UK) 
Français 