DEBRIEFING – For journalist Frédéric Aigouy and a hundred other colleagues and employees, the ax has fallen. Friday, April 7, the judicial liquidation of RT France was decided by the court of Nanterre.
“The situation had lasted for a year”, he recalls, evoking “a sword of Damocles” which threatened a channel and its editorial staff which have never been warned, sanctioned or condemned before, for some breach of ethics by the regulator (the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority, ARCOM) .
However, on February 27, 2022, a broadcast ban was decided by the European Union. Applied from the following March 2, it concerns Europe. Although RT France can continue to broadcast, the channel is no longer truly accessible to the general public: only viewers capable of using the services of a VPN, in order to circumvent the lock of control based on the geolocation of IPs, still manage to access the programs.
On January 20, 2023, the operating conditions of the editorial staff became untenable with the freezing of the channel’s bank accounts, at “the request of the General Directorate of the Treasury”, as the journalist Xenia Fedorova, president and director of information of the channel RT France (French-speaking branch of the Russian media RT, formerly named Russia Today) indicates:
The funds of RT France are frozen at the request of the General Directorate of the Treasury, due to the 9th package of sanctions which does not target RT France. Our channel can no longer continue its activity. Here is our communication. pic.twitter.com/aF3JUsqkLl
— Xenia Fedorova (@xfedorova) January 21, 2023
Frédéric Aigouy, who specifies that the financing of RT France is comparable to any other state-dependent media, in France or in the Anglo-Saxon world in general, denounces “an eminently political decision”.
It is in his eyes a deep source “of disappointment” for a whole team “who did the job” journalistic “in the field”, whether it’s topics like Brexit, RussiaGate or Yellow Vests.
“We are French journalists and we do our job”, testifies Frédéric Aigouy who regrets the lack of brotherhood of certain journalists who fought against RT France, one of the rare media which did not follow “the governmental doxa”.
In the name of the plurality of the press, France-Evening provides support to the editorial staff and employees of RT.