2023-11-07 21:37:00
At Radio France, it’s escalation. After a controversial joke on October 29 targeting Benjamin Netanyahu, the conflict between Guillaume Meurice and the management of public radio reached a new stage on November 6 following a meeting between the comedian and Sibyle Veil, the boss from Radio France. She gave him a warning, which Meurice intends to “challenge in court”. “I made no mistake and I was only doing my job,” he said. specified to Le Monde, invoking “an injustice”. “I practice humor, caricature, political satire, and excess is part of it,” added the columnist for whom “the limit is the law.” Contacted by our colleagues from Release, Guillaume Meurice says he reserves his public explanations for his column in the next issue of Le Grand Dimanche evening. Contrary to its format since the start of the season, the show, which will host Patrick Timsit, will not take place in public this time, “in the face of threats made against one of the comedians”, indicates the website of the Maison de la radio.
”Requirement of responsibility”
Originally, it all started with a joke from Guillaume Meurice, an idea for a “Netanyahu costume” for Halloween, which would be “a kind of Nazi but without a foreskin”. Referrals from listeners to Arcom, numerous messages to the Radio France mediator, outcry on social networks and accusations of anti-Semitism against the comedian. After her interview with Guillaume Meurice, Sibyle Veil sent an email on Monday to Radio France employees recalling “the duty of responsibility of the media, particularly of a public service media”, in the current geopolitical context. ” This requirement of responsibility […] is imposed on every employee of Radio France, including comedians”, while considering that “this does not hinder freedom of expression and the right to caricature […] than to call for discernment.” Humor “is not intended to add division to division”, writes the boss of the round house, according to whom freedom of expression must be accompanied by “the ability to recognize an error in all humility of appreciation”.
More than the joke, it was above all Guillaume Meurice’s refusal to apologize which pushed Sibyle Veil to give him a warning. For his part, the comedian, considering that he had not made a mistake, did not see the point of expressing himself publicly on the subject, particularly outside of a radio column, his profession. Furthermore, “the warning is a disciplinary sanction which cannot be challenged by internal mechanisms. He has no other lever than to turn to the industrial tribunal to challenge it,” explains Benoît Gaspard of the SUD union, who accompanied Guillaume Meurice to the meeting with Sibyle Veil, in a “heavy and closed atmosphere” , he describes. As for the management of Radio France, “no comments on a particular case, everything was said in the letter sent internally on Monday”, it is reported.
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”The invention of humor”
In the round house, feelings are shared: “Some of the employees think that he has crossed the line, others are annoyed by the sanction, there is debate,” says a union source. “Journalists have to work hard to have a balanced treatment of the conflict on the air, and they don’t understand why a comedian can afford to throw that out there for free,” explains another elected official from the Round House. In this sense, Sibyle Veil’s email, and in particular the “requirement of responsibility” that she invokes, was rather well received by the employees who appear on the air.” Even if the way to do it – send an email to all of Radio France – was not understood by everyone. As in the France Bleu premises, far from the controversies that agitate the Parisian headquarters.
Among the unions, we then question the motivations of Sibyle Veil, also seeing it as a way of giving pledges to the outside world, particularly to the political world. The controversy was also used to fuel distrust, shared from the center to the far right, towards public radio considered too left-wing. An example: particularly vocal, the Horizons deputy and member of the board of directors of Radio France Jérémie Patrier-Leitus went on November 3 to Pascal Praud’s set on CNews, then to that of Cyril Hanouna on C8, to denounce the comments of Guillaume Meurice, “a political activist” according to him.
For his part, Guillaume Meurice also intends to pursue “for defamation and public insults” the deputy Meyer Habib (related to LR) who described as “little anti-Semitic vermin” on X. Until then, by way of explanation, Guillaume Meurice had mainly posted a “front page” of Charlie Hebdo, “the invention of humor” with a caveman, oil in one hand, fire in the ‘other. Questioned on the subject by the Tribune on Sunday last weekend, the publishing director Riss dissociated himself from his fellow satirist by affirming that “the Charlie spirit has a good back”, praising a spirit “more subtle and more difficult to master than it seems”.
There is no doubt that the Meurice case fueled discussions at Arcom, where several public and private audiovisual leaders were invited this Tuesday, November 7 to “discuss the treatment” of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. In a statement, the media regulator indicated that it was necessary to avoid “hasty generalizations, stereotypes and sensationalism” when speaking on the air about the conflict between Israel and Hamas, “particularly sensitive”.
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