The CSA fined CNews 200,000 euros for Zemmour's comments on minor migrants

The CNews channel has just been fined 200,000 euros imposed by the Superior Audiovisual Council for "incitement to hatred" and "violence" after comments made in September by its star polemicist Eric Zemmour on unaccompanied minor migrants.

This financial sanction is a first against a news channel, the CSA told AFP.

On September 29, during a debate on the program

devoted to the issue of unaccompanied minors after the attack in front of the former

premises 

, Eric Zemmour declared: "They have nothing to to do here, they are thieves, they are murderers, they are rapists, that is all they are, they must be sent back and they must not even come. "

An exit that had sparked an uproar and the opening of an investigation by the Paris prosecutor's office for "incitement to racial hatred" and "racist public insults", shortly after a conviction of the polemicist for the same reasons.

"Even though these remarks were made within the framework of a debate in itself legitimate (...), they were likely to incite hatred towards unaccompanied foreign minors, and conveyed many stereotypes particularly infamous to their respect, likely to encourage discriminatory behavior ", justifies the CSA in a press release.

Not a first for the Canal + group

"In addition, the Council considered that the control of the antenna had not been ensured, especially since the program was diffused in deferred and without modification, as underlined it the ethics committee of the Canal + group in its opinion issued on October 22, 2020 ", adds the audiovisual authority.

The chain thus "failed in its obligations", estimates the CSA, which had entrusted the referrals relating to this sequence to an independent reporter, CNews having already been put on notice for similar facts at the end of 2019. The CSA had at the time issued a warning to the channel after comments by its star Eric Zemmour on Islam and the colonization of Algeria. 

Thursday's sanction is not a first for the Canal + group: the regulator has already condemned C8 several times for controversial sequences in Cyril Hanouna's broadcasts, including a fine of 3 million euros in 2017 for a hoax judged homophobic.

Another sanction, a one-week advertising deprivation for the program

, had been canceled by the Council of State, forcing the CSA to compensate C8 to the tune of 1.1 million euros.