As the French media landscape becomes increasingly privatised and concentrated under a small set of owners, debate rages over the nature and role of public media.
The French parliamentary commission of inquiry on the impartiality, operation and funding of public service broadcasting is creating turmoil on social media, in a context of mistrust towards institutions and the media.
Commissions of inquiry are one expression of the right of control of the executive by the French assemblies. They end with the production of a report that can lead to law proposals. Commissions comprise members of Parliament (MP) from the different political groups, proportionally. France has witnessed an increase of the numbers of commissions in the last two years, due to the fragmentation of parties, as the commission on Tik Tok in 2025, highly visible on social media.
The commission on public broadcasting was launched in November 2025 on the demand of the political group Union of the Right-wing for the Republic (Union des Droites pour la République – UDR), a political group led by Eric Ciotti, allied with the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen. The demand emerged after edited recordings published by conservative media showed a private conversation of two public media journalists with members from the Socialist Party, suggesting potential collusion between the two. It has reignited a cultural battle: far right regularly asks for the privatisation of public broadcasting, accusing the latter of financing leftist programs with taxpayers’ money. This accusation is not unique to France, as the BBC in the UK or ARD and ZDF in Germany face similar criticism.
As the EU presses France for budgetary rigor, how public money is spent is not irrelevant. The French public broadcasting sector costs €4 billion. In comparison, it costs €10 billion in Germany and €8 billion in the UK. Concerns regarding the use of external private producers are also legitimate. On impartiality, the Arcom (Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communications) already measures the time allocated to political parties in the media and punishes in case of infraction, though too slowly for some progressive media. In parallel to the commission of inquiry, it launched studies aimed at setting out the scope of the principle of impartiality and clarifying the resulting obligations for public service broadcasting.
Notwithstanding, the hearings of the commission create controversies, particularly UDR MP Charles Alloncle’s behaviour who is in charge of the production of the final report. Interviewees claim that he asks biased questions, throws accusations and spreads misinformation. Some media or journalists debunked fake news right after their hearings, like journalist Hugo Clément (France Télevisions, Vakita) on Instagram, or climate-focused public media QuotaClimat. The commission’s vice president, MP Estelle Youssouffa (LIOT), resigned at the start of April, claiming hearings had become staged performances. Centrist newspapers argue that commissions now represent an additional political strategy for parties to gain voters by creating polarization.
In France, public broadcasting undertakes important work, complementary to private media. Some programs, like those led by Elise Lucet or Hugo Clement, highlight controversies regarding multinationals or political parties. In recent years, French Media has become highly consolidated (80-90%) among a handful of billionaires. Some like Vincent Bolloré have strong right-wing leanings. Since 2019, Arcom has reprimanded his TV news channel CNews on 27 occasions and imposed fines totalling €630,001. In 2025, the organization closed C8 and NRJ12 because the channels repeatedly failed to meet their legal and ethical obligations on pluralism and respect for individuals.
The final report of the commission of inquiry will be published at the end of April. In the meantime, President Jérémie Patrier-Leitus will also have to decide whether to report any cases of perjury to the authorities.