The chain has cut. BFMTV dismissed its journalist Rachid M’Barki, after the audit launched due to suspicions of interference, and filed a complaint against X, according to an internal email sent Thursday. The first news channel in France had opened an internal investigation in January because of these suspicions.
They concerned brief broadcasts on the antenna relating in particular to the Russian oligarchs, Qatar or Western Sahara. “These investigations made it possible to identify several sequences, between 2021 and 2022, which were broadcast without respecting the validation processes and the editorial line. These shortcomings are the sole responsibility of a journalist who has not respected the rules in force within the editorial staff. Management has decided to terminate his employment contract on February 21, 2023, ”wrote in this email the director general of the news channel, Marc-Olivier Fogiel.
An “isolated case” says the chain
“A complaint against X relating to the facts of which BFMTV was the victim was filed on February 22, 2023”, he adds, for passive corruption and breach of trust. In response, the channel decided to “further strengthen” its editorial validation systems, specifies Marc-Olivier Fogiel. He underlines in his message that “this isolated case in no way reflects the exceptional and rigorous work carried out with professionalism and ethics by the 250 journalists of BFMTV to whom the management reaffirms its support and its confidence”.
Asked at the beginning of February by the Politico site, which had revealed its implicated, Rachid M’Barki, excluded from the antenna since January 11, had admitted to having “used information which [lui] came from informants” and who had “not necessarily followed the usual course of writing”.
Since then, an investigation by the collective of journalists Forbidden Stories, to which the investigation unit of Radio France and Le Monde have contributed for France, has revealed that this affair was a small part of a vast disinformation enterprise piloted by an Israeli pharmacy, which would sell its services worldwide.