The CSA gives notice to RMC who invited the controversial professor Christian Perronne.

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Gutner / SIPA

RMC was pinned by the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA) for lacking "rigor", "balance" and "mastery of its antenna" during a broadcast at the end of August with Professor Christian Perronne, according to a decision published on Wednesday in the Official Journal.

The media control authority has put the RMC group on notice to respect its information processing obligations.

In question, the controversial comments made by the infectious disease specialist on the Covid-19 pandemic, but also on Lyme disease and malaria, during the "Grand oral" of the show

Les grandes gueules

 on August 31.

"These statements were not the subject of a sufficient contradiction"

Professor Perronne, dismissed in December from his duties as head of service by the Assistance publique-hospitals de Paris (AP-HP) and targeted by a complaint from the Order of Physicians, had in particular denied the resumption of the epidemic.

However, the data published four days earlier by Public Health France confirmed its resumption with an increase in new hospitalizations and admissions in intensive care, explains the CSA.

"This guest was the only member of the medical profession present on the plateau" and "these statements were not the subject of a sufficient contradiction", notes the CSA.

"Therefore, the publisher can not be regarded as having shown honesty and rigor in the presentation and processing of information on the pandemic," said the gendarme of the media.

"A lack of control of the antenna"

The CSA lists other questionable comments on the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment against Covid-19 and on the supposed effectiveness of an antimalarial treatment based on artemisia herbal teas.

Christian Perronne also supported a theory on Lyme disease, arguing that it was "created in a laboratory [by the US military] by a former Nazi".

Professor Perronne "expressed himself in an extremely peremptory manner on all of these questions, without the theses he puts forward (...) having been truly discussed", affirms the CSA.

"Only his opinions were presented, resulting in a marked imbalance in the treatment of these subjects."

These remarks "did not arouse any sufficiently marked reaction from the people present on the plateau during the sequence, which characterizes a lack of control of the antenna", concludes the CSA.

Former head of the infectious and tropical diseases department at the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine), Christian Perronne lost his post after other controversial comments on hydroxychloroquine and for having asserted that patients with Covid represented a financial boon for doctors.

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