Mr President,
Mr President of the Committee on Cultural Affairs and Education,
Ladies and gentlemen of the Assembly,
Allow me, at the beginning of this session, in the case of a bill proposed by the Committee on Cultural Affairs, to greet in my turn the memory of Sophie Dessus, whose brutal disappearance has grieved Parliament and all those, who were lucky enough to know her.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Assembly,
Freedom of expression and freedom of creation are inseparable. Without Freedom, no Republic. Without Freedoms, no democracy. Defending our freedoms is the surest way to defend our security. That is why, after the attacks we have seen, we need more than ever to say what our values, our ethics and our convictions are.
The defence of freedom of expression structures all the debates that accompanied the birth of the Republic. In 2015, we received messages of solidarity from around the world because attacking Paris is an attack on the country of artists and the refuge of freedoms.
This tells us who we are, who we want to be, what our principles are.
To make these principles live, the legislator takes different paths in time. I would like to quickly recall a few steps in this movement and show where we are going today.
The 1881 law is so strong that it has struck a balance between defending press freedom and defending the rights of the citizen in the face of possible abuses of that freedom.
The 1982 law, which created a high authority to guarantee the independence of the audiovisual media in the face of the temptations of political power, was a major moment in this struggle for the independence of an audiovisual born from the influence of the state.
Since 2012, these freedoms have been resolutely strengthened, setbacks have been repaired and the bill before you continues on this ambitious path.
This reform comes after the law of November 2013 on the independence of public broadcasting, under which its managers are again appointed by an independent body. The Act also better ensured the independence of the APF through the way its members were appointed.
It comes after the Finance Law for 2016, which gave back to the financing of the public audiovisual sector its full independence from the general state budget. After the law passed by Michel Françaix in favour of media pluralism. This law included the Charb amendment, which allows each citizen to help the newspaper of his choice, and the creation of the statute of solidarity press company that Charlie Hebdo first adopted last July.
But I am also thinking here of the bill on Freedom of creation, architecture and heritage. This law, which I have the honour to take up again, enshrines creative freedom. It will give artists and performance halls more robust weapons against censorship, withdrawal. Without making it an absolute freedom because hate speech sometimes takes the pretext of the spectacle to spread.
I have no doubt that the bill on the independence of the media, which Patrick Bloche is carrying out in a fruitful dialogue with the Government, will add to this legislative building protecting freedoms.
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Ladies and gentlemen of the Assembly,
I have followed your debates in the Commission with great interest, and I am pleased with the points of agreement reached.
This bill provides new guarantees for journalists, the media and the media as a whole.
It is a text of great coherence and balance which enshrines and perfectthe reforms undertaken during this legislature.
I would like to stress to you three major points of this project.
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First: the protection of editorial freedom.
Article 1er extends to all journalists, regardless of the media in which they work, the protection that already exists in favour of journalists in the public broadcasting sector since the amendment of the law on audiovisual in 2009. This protection allows a journalist to refuse any pressure that would lead him to accept an act contrary to his intimate professional conviction.
I welcome the clarification of this concept in committee. The articulation found with the company’s ethical charter will ensure effective protection anchored in a shared collective framework.
Second: protecting the media from economic pressures.
Examples of advertisers' pressure on programming cannot be ignored: Article 2, by entrusting the CFS with the task of ensuring that the principles of independence and pluralism of information are not infringed in an effective and pragmatic way.
I should point out that these provisions do not give the APF powers that are outside its purview. I want to talk about ethics and ethics, which are part of the dialogue between journalists, publishers and their audiences.
The CFS cannot have a supervisory power ex ante professional relations between journalists and their management.
Finally, I would like to mention the third strong point of this text.
It is the creation of “committees on the honesty, independence and pluralism of information and programs”.
Without infringing on the editorial freedom of publishers, they will make it possible to deal in a transparent and concerted manner with any threats to the media’s independence that may come to its attention.
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Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to refer to the amendments I wish to submit on behalf of the Government.
I will start by improving the guarantees given to journalists' sources. This is a major democratic issue! What is at stake is the ability to investigate, to inform and therefore to make a real democracy work.
I know that you are committed to this reform. You demonstrated that during your work in the Committee on Cultural Affairs. You also know my determination to see this reform adopted as the President of the Republic promised.
It is therefore up to all of us to find the fairest balance between the security we must guarantee journalists in their investigative work and the collective security guarantees we owe to all our fellow citizens.
Your work has led to significant improvements to the law of 4 July 2010. The Committee on Cultural Affairs and the Committee on Laws have pursued this same objective with sometimes different approaches. It is up to us to find together the point of balance that will allow this long awaited text to be adopted!
Among these improvements, I would like to mention the obligation placed on investigators to obtain prior authorization from the judge of liberty and detention before any action that could undermine the confidentiality of sources. This control was carried out a posteriori in the 2010 law. This is a major step forward!
I would also like to mention the extension of the protection of the confidentiality of sources to all editorial staff and the publication director, in short, to the entire chain of information searches, where the 2010 law only protected journalists.
I would like to quote again the prohibition against convicting a journalist of the crime of concealment of a breach of the secrecy of the investigation or the investigation, of a breach of professional secrecy or of a breach of privacy.
On all this we agree and this is the first benefit of our common work.
It seems necessary today to better define also the notion of “overriding public interest imperative” in the name of which it may be justified to breach the confidentiality of sources.
In the face of the risk of interpretation of any overly vague formula, specifying what can prejudice the fundamental interests of the Nation by defining what is “serious” gives the judge a clear framework for action.
This definition corresponds to a balance that I present to you on behalf of the Government, which is reasonable. We will have an opportunity to come back to this during our discussion.
We will also have the opportunity to come back to the other amendments I am proposing, which I will not dwell on.
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Ladies and gentlemen of the Assembly,
To defend culture, to protect the freedom of creation, to guarantee the independence of the media, is to defeat the war against culture. That is to say, what a social project we have. It is also a message of our society’s confidence in itself, its ability to be transparent and to build its future with its eyes wide open.
Thank you.