It was a surprising mix of genres that MP Quentin Bataillon, who chairs the commission of inquiry into TNT frequencies, indulged in when he came to take stock of his work, Tuesday April 2, 2024, on Cyril’s set Hanouna… who himself had been interviewed by this commission!
In Do not touch My TV (broadcast on C8), the elected representative of the presidential majority, in fact, scratched a presenter competing with Cyril Hanouna, Yann Barthès, whom he had also heard: “it’s the first time that I got angry, he had a fairly arrogant attitude, he refused to answer our questions,” said Quentin Bataillon about the presenter of Dailyon TMC.
The deputy then did educational work on the subject of the work of his commission, driven by the LFI deputies, in the fall of 2023, to shed light on the allocation of DTT frequencies (including those of C8 and CNews, brought back into play This year).
“Getting out of the witch hunt”
Its rapporteur, the Insoumis Aurélien Saintoul, will write his report “alone” by the beginning of May. “I imagine that he will be marked,” commented Mr. Bataillon, who said he wanted to “get out of the witch hunt, the hunt for presenters, journalists, channels.”
“We need to make recommendations on the framework” for the choice of frequency holders, he said. “We don’t go into people’s homes to tell them what is good, what is bad,” argued the parliamentarian, adding that “sometimes, the contempt that some people may have for your show is transferred to those who watch it “.
More and more tense hearings
Quentin Bataillon stressed having “done everything to keep the most cordial relations possible” with Aurélien Saintoul, while relations became strained over the course of the hearings, from that of Vincent Bolloré, billionaire who controls the Canal+ group including C8, to that of from the Minister of Culture Rachida Dati.
This same Aurélien Saintoul joked about X about the invitation from Quentin Bataillon in “TPMP”: “thank you for your experimental approach to move the commission of inquiry forward”.
“Don’t forget to check if we can now name or even criticize Vincent Bolloré in TPMP without risking being attacked by Cyril Hanouna,” he added in reference to an episode from November 2022 during which the LFI deputy Louis Boyard, a guest on the show, was insulted live – which resulted in a record fine of 3.5 million euros for C8.
A highly criticized intervention
Several deputies then criticized Quentin Bataillon’s intervention on the channel: for Alexis Corbière (LFI), “no one can believe in his independence and objectivity anymore”; “Here’s another one who is damaging Parliament and getting tired of destroying democracy,” posted, still on X, the ecologist Benjamin Lucas.
Our “TPMP” file
Olivier Faure, for his part, attacked Quentin Bataillon on his own arrogance “of going to Hanouna to spit on Barthès while chairing a commission of inquiry on TNT”.