Public broadcasting reform: let's not sacrifice France Médias Monde

As Culture Minister Rachida Dati persists in pushing through her reform of public broadcasting, the second reading of the bill in the Senate on July 10th promises to be a decisive moment. Under the pretext of centralization, a vast restructuring is taking shape, threatening the balance, independence, and autonomy of our public media.

The plan to create a single holding company, bringing together France Télévisions, Radio France, the INA, and France Médias Monde (FMM), aims to standardize entities with specific missions. This model compromises pluralism, editorial diversity, and editorial independence. Behind the rhetoric of budgetary efficiency, a key pillar of our democracy is faltering.

In the Senate's sights: France Médias Monde. The majority wants it to be integrated into this unified superstructure, at the risk of weakening its autonomy, its governance, and its editorial line geared toward its listeners around the world. Such a merger would amount to diluting its unique missions into a global logic unsuited to its vocation and its audience. The risk is real: permanently weakening France's voice in the world, and ultimately risking the disappearance of France Médias Monde, whose resources are far inferior to those of France TV or Radio France.

This merger project takes us back to an already painful experience: the merger of France 24 and RFI, initiated in 2008 and finalized in 2012. Behind the talk of efficiency