Is France’s most popular news channel, CNews, a hotbed of Nazis and clerical fascists? Well, judging by the cartoon below, which has been published by the weekly French TV guide and magazine Télérama, the answer would appear to be “yes”. The cartoon shows Pascal Praud, one of the channel’s best-known presenters, dressed in the brown uniform of the Nazi paramilitary organisation, the SA, and saying, “On CNews we are pluralists, we have all the shades from brown to black!”
Praud is accompanied by other CNews presenters and commentators. Geoffrey Lejeune, a frequent guest and editor of the weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, is likewise dressed in the brown uniform of the SA and sports a red-and-black Nazi-style armband, on which the swastika has been replaced by the CNews logo. The other members of the panel, including blonde CNews presenter Laurence Ferrari, are dressed in the black tunics of the clerical forces which infamously collaborated with the Nazis in Vichy France.
So, how exactly are CNews presenters and commentators supposed to be like Nazis or clerical fascists? Well, apart from the fact that some of them are indeed Catholic – like roughly two-thirds of the French population – this frequent viewer of CNews, who also happens to be fluent in German and to have spent a good portion of his adult life studying and writing on German fascism, does not have a clue.
Perhaps it is because in the aftermath of the October 7th massacres and even amidst the Israeli military operations in Gaza which followed, CNews has undoubtedly been the French news channel to remain most steadfast in its support of Israel.
Or perhaps it is because when the October 7th massacres sparked a remarkable surge of antisemitism in France itself, CNews reported on this and CNews moderators and commentators even wondered aloud why French President Emmanuel Macron chose not to attend a massive Rally Against Antisemitism which had been organised in response.
Or perhaps it is because when 16-year-old Thomas Perrotto was stabbed to death in an attack on a village ball in the south of France last November, CNews reported on the anti-white racist epithets which accompanied the attack and moderators and guests wondered why French authorities refused to publish the – as it would turn out, predominantly Arab – names of the suspects and insisted on presenting the incident as a “brawl”.
Or perhaps it is because when, time and again, French authorities refuse to treat the innumerable lone-wolf knife attacks with which France is plagued as acts of terror, preferring instead to describe the assailants as mentally disturbed, CNews moderators and guests have dared to suggest that this might just be a way of covering up their political or political-religious motives.
Who knows?
What is clear, at any rate, is that Télérama cartoonist Soulcié carefully selected just which CNews presenters to depict in his cartoon, since if he had put CNews’s other star presenters, the Tunisian-born Sonia Mabrouk and the Guadeloupean Christine Kelly, in Nazi uniforms or clerical tunics, this would have undoubtedly caused some cognitive dissonance for his public.
CNews also notably features many commentators and guests of Arab origin, such as the Moroccan-born commentator Naïma M’Faddel. Miraculously, like Mabrouk, they often find themselves in agreement with the supposed “fascists” on many of the above topics – as if individuals were able to think for themselves, rather than their ideas and opinions being a function of their ethnic origins or skin colour.
CNews was founded in 1999 as iTélé before being re-launched as CNews in 2017. It forms part of the Canal+ audiovisual group, France’s most important provider of pay television services, which is in turn controlled by the French media giant Vivendi. In December, CNews passed its rival BFM for the first time to become France’s most-watched news channel, a position it has regularly maintained since.
Perhaps not coincidentally, it shortly thereafter became the target of increasing attacks from rival media and the largely publicly-funded NGO Reporters sans frontières (‘Reporters Without Borders’). As alluded to in the Télérama cartoon, it is presently under investigation by the French regulator ARCOM for an alleged lack of “pluralism” and “independence” in its programming.
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and find him on Bluesky.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.