Paris (AFP)

The traditional transfer window in the media has taken on a very political color this year, with televisions and radios positioning themselves in view of the presidential election, in particular by recruiting elected officials and personalities with clear-cut positions.

The 2022 electoral event appears to be one of the red threads of the changes announced in recent weeks in the back-to-school programs.

Like France 2 which will call on Léa Salamé to co-host Laurent Ruquier's talk show on Saturday evening "We are live" and give it a more political orientation, and which will launch a September "8:22 pm" you dedicated to the presidential election "at least twice a month", as revealed by Télérama.

But also France Culture which dedicates a new section to politics on Saturdays and recruits Patrick Cohen for the Sunday show "L'Esprit public".

The same Patrick Cohen, leaving from Europe 1, will gain traction in "C à vous", the magazine of France 5, soon extended to give more space to politics.

- Valls on BFMTV -

Another rising media figure, Mohamed Bouhafsi, until now a football specialist on RMC, joins France Télévisions and will participate in "C à vous" and "20H22".

The former Prime Minister Manuel Valls will for his part debate in programs of RMC and BFMTV.

The Altice group's news channel has also recruited Yves Calvi, who remains at the head of the RTL morning show, and Marianne Natacha Polony's editorial director.

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Changes are also in sight for LCI, which has already strengthened its teams with the arrival of Ruth Elkrief, ex-pillar of BFMTV.

France Inter put squarely on a quartet of personalities who will give listeners of its morning "various points of view, like a toolbox, to allow them to form an opinion", as indicated by its boss Laurence Bloch in Parisien .

They are Natacha Polony, the former minister and director of Oxfam Cécile Duflot, the deputy editor-in-chief of Figaro Alexandre Devecchio and the director of Point Etienne Gernelle.

The most important changes are announced on Europe 1 which will welcome figures from CNews (including Laurence Ferrari and Dimitri Pavlenko, one of Eric Zemmour's acolytes in "Face à l'Info").

The radio is getting closer to the very conservative news channel controlled by Vincent Bolloré, who has also become the station's number one shareholder thanks to its rise in Lagardère.

For the academic and specialist in the history of the press Alexis Lévrier, it is also the model of opinion media of CNews, strongly inspired by Fox News, which is spreading oil in the media.

- "Righting" -

"It is now a channel that cuts croupiers to BFMTV, and has even passed in front on several occasions, because of programs like that of Pascal Praud and Eric Zemmour which go in the direction of divided opinion debates, with stakeholders who lean mostly to the right and often in a form of radicalism, "he says.

"CNews' audience and influence is watched very closely by other channels and it's no wonder they align a bit with that," he said.

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A phenomenon that the author of "Jupiter and Mercury. Presidential power facing the press", also considers fueled by the power's interest in CNews or the magazine Valeurs Actuelles.

Beyond a "right-wing" of the antennas, he criticizes this model for giving priority to opinion over information and "blurring the line between journalism and politics".

And this, by putting on the same level former elected officials and journalists or, conversely, by serving the presidential ambitions lent to Eric Zemmour who "goes under the radar of the CSA", his speaking time on CNews not being limited. by the rules on pluralism.

Even if there is clearly "an interest among the French for transgression and asperity", "it is not for the public service to outbid the race for opinion", assured the director of antennas and programs of France Televisions, Stéphane Sitbon-Gomez, in the Journal du dimanche.

© 2021 AFP