In France, debates about the freedom of the press are never settled. They resurface regularly, in different guises, animated by the same unresolved tension: how to reconcile a fiercely protected ideal of free expression with public institutions that are funded, regulated, and scrutinised by the state. The latest incarnation of this national obsession is a parliamentary inquiry into public broadcasting — an exercise that, since late November, has increasingly resembled a televised drama.
Officially, the inquiry is meant to examine the functioning and impartiality of France’s publicly funded television and radio. In practice, it has become a live spectacle, broadcast in full, in which journalists, executives and lawmakers perform under the unblinking eye of cameras — and, just as importantly, social media.
COFFEE WITH POLITICIANS
The story began with a brief, grainy video. Two well-known public radio voices, Patrick Cohen and Thomas Legrand — both long-standing political commentators on France Inter, the country’s most influential public radio station — were filmed chatting over coffee in Paris with figures close to the Socialist Party. In another country, the scene might have passed unnoticed. In France, where suspicion of ideological proximity between media and politics is a recurring theme, it detonated.
The accusations were swift: public broadcasters, critics argued, were no longer merely reporting on politics but socialising with it. Cohen and Legrand, summoned before parliament, rejected the charge with vehemence, framing themselves as targets of a political and media campaign orchestrated by conservative outlets linked to Vincent Bolloré — a powerful industrialist whose media empire looms large in French debates over press pluralism and influence.
They were questioned by Charles Alloncle, the inquiry’s rapporteur — a right-wing deputy tasked with shaping both the tone and the final conclusions of the investigation. Alloncle approached the hearings less as a neutral auditor than as a prosecutor, pressing witnesses sharply and, at times, theatrically. Cohen, a seasoned interviewer accustomed to holding politicians to account, responded with the reflexes of his trade: evasions, counter-questions, and ironic distance. The exchange crystallised one of the inquiry’s recurring reversals — journalists suddenly discovering what it means to be interrogated.
Around this central duel, other voices entered the frame. Anne Sicard, a lawmaker from the far-right National Rally, accused public broadcasters of abandoning neutrality in favour of moral instruction — a familiar refrain on the French right, where public media is often viewed as culturally dominant and politically skewed. From the opposite side, Socialist MP Ayda Hadizadeh dismissed the entire process as a thinly veiled witch hunt, invoking the spectre of McCarthyism to describe what she saw as an attack on editorial independence.
Some participants seemed particularly attuned to the televisual nature of the moment. Aymeric Caron, a former television pundit turned far-left parliamentarian, delivered indignant monologues during earlier hearings that circulated widely online. He is far from an anomaly: in France, the boundary between media commentator and political actor is notably porous, and few are surprised when figures move from studios to parliamentary benches.
POLITICAL THEATRE
Presiding over the proceedings is Jérémie Patrier-Leitus, a centrist lawmaker allied with President Emmanuel Macron. As chair of the inquiry, he has repeatedly insisted that the hearings are not meant to become political theatre. Yet his protestations sit uneasily with the reality of sessions that unfold like live talk shows — part cross-examination, part performance.
The executives of public broadcasting have also had their turn under the lights. Delphine Ernotte, who heads France Télévisions, the country’s main public TV group, defended an institution she sees as a pillar of democratic life. Sibyle Veil, chief executive of Radio France, and Adèle Van Reeth, who runs France Inter, echoed that argument, presenting public media as both pluralistic and indispensable — particularly in an era of polarised private outlets.
None of this is unprecedented. French parliamentary inquiries have increasingly adopted the rhythms of television, from the 2018 Benalla affair involving a former aide to President Emmanuel Macron, to more recent hearings featuring celebrity hosts and media tycoons. Once broadcast live, oversight inevitably bends toward spectacle.
The inquiry will continue into the spring, when a final report is due. It may or may not resolve questions of bias or governance. What it will certainly confirm is something older and deeper: in France, freedom of expression is not a settled principle but a permanent argument — staged, contested, and endlessly replayed. Even parliament, it seems, cannot escape becoming one of its many theatres.
In this respect, France occupies a distinctive yet increasingly familiar position. In the United Kingdom, public broadcasting remains largely shielded from direct parliamentary confrontation, with the BBC more often scrutinised through regulatory bodies than turned into a live political arena. In the United States, by contrast, the battle over media freedom and bias is waged less through formal inquiries than through relentless partisan warfare, market pressure, and public denunciation, where journalism is protected by the First Amendment yet constantly delegitimised in political discourse.
Across the Balkans, the dynamic is again different, though no less charged. Public broadcasters there often operate under far more direct political pressure, with questions of independence intertwined with fragile institutions, recent conflicts, and contested democratic norms. Parliamentary oversight, when it exists, is frequently perceived not as spectacle but as leverage. Yet even in these contexts, the same tension persists: who controls the narrative, who speaks for the public, and where the line between journalism and power should be drawn.
Seen from Belgrade, Paris may look theatrically excessive, even indulgent. But the French case ultimately illustrates a broader truth shared across democracies old and new. The struggle over media freedom is never purely legal or institutional. It is cultural, emotional, and performative. France merely stages it more openly, turning its anxieties into public drama, and its parliament into a mirror of a debate that, everywhere, refuses to end.
*Author is former member of the UN senior staff