Four days before the first round of the presidential election, feverishness wins over France 2, flagship of France Télévisions. Emmanuel Macron’s decision not to participate in “Elysée 2022” Tuesday April 5, unlike the eleven other candidates for the election, forcing the channel to retransmit extracts from the La Défense meeting of the candidate president, does not end to make waves. ” Dear @France2tvduring the second round, if the French have this confidence in me, I announce that I wish to replace the interviews on your channel by broadcasting the best excerpts from my meetings”, squealed on Twitter Marine Le Pen, the day after the show.
In this context of mistrust, the deprogramming of a magazine “Complément d’Enquête” devoted to the advertising targeting in which the teams of presidential candidates engage, initially scheduled for Thursday, feeds suspicion. At the origin of this decision, Delphine Ernotte, the president of the television group, undoubtedly wanted to avoid ” add fuel to the fire “, says an employee.
Sent to the editorial staff so that they can view it before its broadcast, preceded by trailers broadcast on France 2, this 54-minute investigation by Chloé Vienne entitled Big data: when politicians target us, tells how the digital teams of the candidates use the coordinates of the citizens in order to send them messages (text messages, e-mails, voice messages) electoral. A practice adopted by most of them, despite the risks it poses to the privacy of citizens.
“It is a subject of general interest, which deserved to be broadcast before the election, explains a journalist from France 2. There’s something crazy about deciding that you can’t do journalism because it’s election time. » One of the senior executives of the audiovisual group said he feared that this investigation “feeds the “all rotten””.
Contrary to the electoral code
Officially, the electoral campaign ending Friday at midnight, the candidates who would have wished to use their right of reply would have had less than forty-eight hours to do so, which would have been contrary to the electoral code.
“My fear is that the magazine will be instrumentalized by one or the other. If a controversy had arisen, we would not have had time to respond to it,” confirms Germain Dagognet, director of magazines at France Télévisions. It is also for this reason that “Elysée 2022” was exceptionally scheduled for Tuesday, and not Thursday. In 2017, the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA) criticized them for having broadcast the political program, twenty-four hours before the end of the campaign.
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