Video of Thomas Legrand and Patrick Cohen with elected officials of the Socialist Party: the leaders of France Télé and Radio France heard by Arcom

The broadcasting regulator wants to clear the air. Following the release of videos showing public service journalists Thomas Legrand and Patrick Cohen with Socialist Party leaders , Arcom is preparing to interview Delphine Ernotte Cunci and Sibyle Veil, the presidents of France Télévisions and Radio France respectively. "The Arcom board [...] has decided to hold hearings successively in the coming days with the presidents of France Télévisions and Radio France, in order to gather their explanations and observations," the authority announced on Thursday, September 11.

Arcom, which will hear the two presidents behind closed doors, added that it had "decided a few months ago to initiate a broader reflection on the requirement for independence and impartiality in the public audiovisual communications sector."

France Télévisions' ethics committee, for its part, announced that it was taking up the matter. "Given the scale of the controversy surrounding the broadcast of a conversation between two public broadcaster journalists and two Socialist Party officials, the France Télévisions Ethics Committee has decided to take up this matter and will publish its opinion shortly," it wrote in a press release published Wednesday, September 10.

The authority has been contacted several times by MPs and the public following the broadcast of videos by the far-right media outlet L'Incorrect on September 5. In this sequence, filmed in July in a Parisian restaurant, we can see Thomas Legrand, a columnist for Libération and France Inter – he gave up his weekly radio show on Tuesday, but will continue to appear on air – and Patrick Cohen, a columnist who also appears on France Inter and the program C à vous (France 5), talking with Pierre Jouvet, secretary general of the Socialist Party, and Luc Broussy, president of the Socialist Party's national council.

During this discussion, which also discussed the left's strategy for the 2027 presidential election, Thomas Legrand declared: "We are doing what is necessary for [Rachida] Dati, Patrick [Cohen] and me." These remarks could have been interpreted by some as a bias against the outgoing Minister of Culture. The sequence thus provoked a salvo of criticism against the two journalists, both from LR, the National Rally and La France Insoumise.