During the launch of his election campaign, the presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron announced that he wanted to abolish the contribution to public broadcasting.
The French Coalition for Cultural Diversity, which is very attached to public broadcasting, is deeply concerned about this proposal. Replacing an allocated resource with funding that depends on the goodwill of the government in power would pose a serious threat to the independence, sustainability and missions of public service broadcasting.
Taking the risk of weakening the funding of public broadcasting means compromising the commitment of staff, public companies, journalists, creators, artists and all the professionals who contribute to the richness of the public service offering.
In a world that is seeing the growing dominance of social networks and a proliferation of false information, when it is not propaganda, and which is undergoing profound media concentration movements, public service is undoubtedly a safeguard and a bulwark for our democracies as well as for our cultural exception.
Every day, France Télévisions, Radio France, ARTE, INA, France Médias Monde and the other public broadcasting companies play an essential role: guaranteeing the pluralism of information and acting as a pillar for the financing and broadcasting of French and European creativity.
The reform of the collection of the contribution to public broadcasting was necessary, with the disappearance at the end of 2022 of the housing tax on which it was based. However, budgeting the resources of public broadcasting is a very bad solution. It is even the opposite of what would be necessary to guarantee its independence: a directly allocated resource (which does not pass through the state budget), a sustainable and dynamic resource, a predictable resource. It is also the opposite of what all the major European countries do, in which strong public services exist and benefit from resources that are directly allocated to them.
Making public service resources dependent on the general state budget would subject the future of public audiovisual service to the vagaries of the economic situation of each new finance law.
Public broadcasting is an essential support for the dissemination of French creativity and the promotion of new talent, and a pillar for cultural diversity and media pluralism. It deserves to be given the means to fulfil its ambitions, its autonomy and its independence.
Press contact for France:
Agnès Mazet – 01 40 23 45 11 – agnes.mazet@sacd.fr
Press contact for international:
Guillaume Prieur – contact@coalitionfrancaise.org – www.coalitionfrancaise.org