Society | Arcom seized after a question from Pascal Praud linking bedbugs and immigration

2023-09-29 14:32:20

Renaissance and LFI deputies announced on Friday that they would refer the matter to the media regulator, after a question was “racist” by journalist Pascal Praud asking on CNews if the resurgence of bedbugs could be linked to immigration.

The controversy arose during the Friday broadcast of “L’heure des pros”, during a debate on the multiplication of bedbugs in France. “Do we know why there are more bedbugs today? Is it related to hygiene? I will ask all the questions“, says the host in the preamble to his interlocutor, Nicolas Roux de Bézieux, founder-director of a platform specializing in the management of pests such as bedbugs.

“There is a lot of immigration at the moment. Is it people who do not have the same hygienic conditions as those on French soil who bring them, because they are in the street, because perhaps they do not have do they not have access to all the services like the others? Is this related to this?“, asks the journalist.

“Absolutely not“, then responds categorically, the business manager, before Pascal Praud, warned of an emerging controversy on social networks, justifies his question at the end of the show. “The National Association for Border Assistance for Foreigners (…) has withdrawn from the Roissy waiting area infested with bedbugs. A situation which, according to her, continues to deteriorater” since his first reports in February, he then argued.

This is’“a rancid racism that we hoped would be eradicated!“, the Renaissance deputies protested in a message published on the social networkuninhibited” et “despicable“. Also on

Requested by AFP, Arcom confirmed that it had been contacted, without specifying the identity of the authors of the report, and would soon investigate the sequence in question.