France can be proud of its resistance to media deregulation | Agnès Poirier | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
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The last 30 years have seen the ever-popular concept of media deregulation gaining ground in countries such as the US and Britain. As recently as 2009, the then shadow minister Jeremy Hunt was still adamant that media regulation in this country was "heavy-handed" and "over-paternalistic", and that "big-bang" deregulation of the media would revive local news outlets. France, on the other hand, has at least partially resisted it.
In France, unlike in Britain, the state not only directly funds and supervises public broadcasters but also regulates the output of private television by, for instance, implementing legally binding quotas. To quote one example, the resounding commercial success of Canal Plus in the 1990s meant that the broadcaster had to invest larger and larger sums of money (a fixed percentage of its profits) in cinema production. Imagine the British government telling Sky News that it must invest part of its profits in arthouse films.
Thanks to Canal Plus, the likes of the Coen brothers and Krzysztof Kieślowski were able to make films which met with a huge audience all over the world. This is regulation at its best: when commercial success goes hand in hand with aiding artists reach a broader audience.
Of course not everything in the French system is perfect. In 1982, François Mitterrand opened France's broadcasting to private ownership. For a few years, a certain Silvio Berlusconi tried his hand at La 5. The result was a cultural shock for French viewers: Italian-style game shows, scantily clad hostesses and endless repeats of American series. Luckily, Berlusconi eventually gave up on operating in France in 1992.
In 1989, a government agency, the Supreme Audiovisual Council (CSA) was set up to supervise and regulate broadcasting, both public and private, but not to create new regulation (which only the government can do). Ever since, private broadcasters have had to fulfil certain obligations, usually to do with promoting culture. For instance, no films can be shown on Wednesdays, as it is traditionally the day of new cinema releases. Political pluralism must also be guaranteed. During election campaigns, broadcasters must give the same amount of airtime to the different candidates. Also, 50% of television programming must be of European origin, of which 40% must be French.
On radio stations, 35% of songs must be of Francophone origin, including African-French and Arabic-French. Advertising is also limited to 8 minutes per hour on public TV channels, and 12 minutes on private channels. The CSA's main sanction is to fine non-compliant broadcasters. Of course, many broadcasters choose to include the costs of fines in their budgets.
The French print media are regulated by the 1881 law. Amended over the years, it prohibits any one media group from controlling more than 30% of the daily press. It also prohibits, during the preliminary stage of a judicial investigation, the publication of images relating to a crime or offence and information about the identity of the victim of a sexual offence [Yeah, tell that to Nafissatou Diallo. Ed.]. The law also prohibits photographing, filming and recording court proceedings. Hence the national shock at seeing Dominique Strauss-Kahn being paraded by the American police and justice back in May. [Wtf? Nafissatou Diallo, bitch!]
Privacy laws in France are strong and certainly do limit journalists' powers when investigating public figures' private lives. Mitterrand's second family was only divulged to the public with Mitterrand's approval soon before he died. Would it have made any difference to the French to know he had two families? Probably not. Indeed, rather than prove the press' collusion with power, French privacy laws derive from a national consensus about what should remain private and what belongs into the public realm.
Mitterrand's good judgment and competence are worth scrutinising, not his having two families. At the same time, there might be one or two things French journalists regret not having investigated further, whether it is Mitterrand's use of public money to transport or host this second family, or his suffering from cancer when he was re-elected in 1988. But then it isn't hard to argue that this type of information is in the public interest.
By contrast, the British defence of phone hacking and blagging holds that even questionable journalistic methods can be justified by a noble end, namely the holding to account of figures in the public or political arena. In France, such an attitude is considered flawed and immature, a by-product of puritanism and a pretext for a fundamentally voyeuristic culture.
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There is one key problem with this argument: French tv is shit.
Okay, no, I'll rephrase that. If you're a lefty intellectual it's wonderful. Let's see what we have next Wednesday on terrestrial tv. On TF1 it's old episodes of
CSI back to back, on two we have a Swiss made-for-tv-movie about an obese kid, on three the chateaux of the Périgord, Canal+ has films but we don't care about that because you have to pay for them, Arte has
Rome, which makes a nice change from documentaries about Fellini, and M6 has a documentary about going camping. This is prime-time stuff, you understand.
So yeah, you might bitch about TOWIE or Come Dine With Me, but by God things could be a lot, lot worse.
To be entirely fair, however, I should say that this is apparently what the audience wants. When I get in from work I just want to see a bunch of chavs screaming at each other. I seem to be the only one, however. Everyone else I know here will happily set their Tivos for a two hour special on organic farming in the Ardennes. I'm not sure whether they're boring or I'm a cretin.
Incidentally, radio stations get round the restrictions of where their songs come from by putting on three solid hours of chanson française, usually on Sunday night or at 3am or some other time. Means that they can free up the rest of their schedules to play whatever the audience likes, rather than what the state orders them to play.
France can be proud of its resistance to media deregulation
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