BFMTV is in crisis and some seem to be delighted. Employees of the 24-hour news channel and RMC voted on Thursday evening to resume the strike movement against a savings plan providing for the elimination of around 500 jobs. A first 24-hour strike was launched on Wednesday within NextradioTV, Altice's media subsidiary. While many journalists tweeted about the strike movement on Wednesday, netizens took the opportunity to attack the channel, criticizing its role in public debate.
"If they could be on strike all year long it would make us vacation!" », One can read. Or again: "Frankly, what idea to go and complain to the striking BFM journalists who, freelancers or not, are helping to destroy public debate and spread far-right ideas? If Twitter is a distorting mirror of society, these numerous reactions suggest a certain hostility towards the continuous news channel. How did BFMTV come to such a level of distrust among viewers?
The success story collapses
It is a success story that is collapsing, that of a chain a little low-end when it arrived in 2004 which imposes itself against its two competitors. For the year 2019, its annual audience share was 2.3% according to Médiamétrie, against 0.8% for CNews and 1% for LCI. "When the leaders break their faces, those who have always succeeded, it is not uncommon to see people play with a bad spirit," observes Jean-Marie Charon, sociologist of the media. We sneer because success is no longer there.
In addition, his audience success is directly associated with a whole series of tragedies: the Merah affair, the 2015 attacks, the yellow vests ... This feeds ambivalence among viewers, particularly palpable on Twitter. Reading some publications, BFMTV would jeopardize democracy and play the game of the far right.
"We find a classic phenomenon of the social representation of the role of the media," continues the sociologist. At all stages of the history of the media, there is a tendency to attribute very strong responsibilities to them in what society is going through. "
In the 19th century, the popular press, like Le Petit Journal , was found guilty of the increase in crime due to its handling of news stories. In the years 1950-1960, television was criticized for its role in delinquency in the suburbs with black jackets. "It's an old problem in France," insists Jean-Marie Charon. And the news channels, in turn, are criticized for their role in the democratic debate.
The idea of collusion
"In parallel, we have been imputing to BFMTV for a few years this idea of collusion with the authorities," emphasizes Jean-Marie Charon. The chain would be behind Emmanuel Macron ". The treatment of yellow vests and violence protests played a big role in shaping this opinion. “I attended debates with the yellow vests, notably at the Assizes of Journalism. The main critics targeted the fact that the chains had insisted on the violence of the yellow vests while remaining initially silent on the police violence and the wounded. Without David Dufresne's census, they would have been even slower to process them, ”he analyzes.
It's a bit drunk your taunts on the strike of BFMTV, at some point whatever we think of the channel, I do not see how we can rejoice that hundreds of families find themselves on the floor.
Knowing that it's not Apolline De Malherbe who's going to jump, eh.
Paradoxically, people are very virulent about BFMTV and at the same time, they are often stuck on this channel. It is even for many the only television reference. Except that the employees who will suffer from this savings plan, reporters, freelancers, are not the main architects of public distrust. It is rather a question of editorialists and great figures of BFMTV.
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