Equity in Television Coverage - Part 2: Equity/Equality.

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan is the founder of France Arise, a Gaullist eurosceptic movement, and at the moment, he is frustrated. TF1, the private television channel with the most national audience share (19.3% in February 2017 according to Mediametrie), didn't invite him to their big debate due to take place on 20th March. The programme will feature Jean- Luc Melanchon (Front de Gauche (Left Front), far-left), Emmanuel Macron (En Marche! (Forward!), centre), Benoit Hamon (Parti Socialiste (Socialist Party), left-wing), Francois Fillon (Les Republicains (The Republicans), right-wing) and Marine Le Pen (Front National (National Front), far-right). Dupont-Aignan currently represents 2% of the intentions of vote for the first round of the presidential elections on 23rd April, as shown below:

Polls calculated by Linternaute.com

Dupont-Aignan decided to complain by sending a letter to the CSA (Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel) Superior Council of Audiovisual Content)). Olivier Schrameck is the president, to whom this letter is addressed. It was published on lejdd.fr by Arnaud Focraud, and my translation is shown below:

Mr Olivier SCHRAMECK

President

CSA

[Address]

Registered letter

Dear President,

After analysing the time of intervention of various political personalities between 1st February to 5th March 2017, and despite many reminders to the CSA, the equity in this presidential election is absolutely not respected.

During the last regional elections, France Arise obtained 3.81% of votes, which is nearly as many as the Left Party (Front de Gauche) and the Green Party (Europe Ecologie les Verts), yet, with a time of 9 hours and 48 minutes on television dedicated to my candidacy, clearly this isn't fair.

This equity, which is based in part on the last regional elections, should oblige television channels to dedicate twice as much time to my candidacy onscreen.

With this in mind, I ask you to act as quickly as possible concerning this scandalous imbalance between the different candidates.

I am conscious that the CSA, which you preside, does everything in its power to preserve equity in the media, which is essential for the smooth democratic running of our politics, and I would like to thank you in advance for the reminders already in place.

We are now 41 days from the 1st round of the presidential elections. 53% of the French population, according to the latest polls, have not yet decided who they will vote for. The respect of equity is a necessity for the smooth running of this presidential election runs smoothly. It is a matter of respect of French voters.

Yours sincerely,

Nicolas DUPONT-AIGNAN

Essonne Deputy

President of France Arise

Presidential Election Candidate

According to Focraud and the French-Press Agency (L'Agence France Presse), Dupont-Aigan is right. Francois Fillon is covered a lot more than his opponents. Here is a statistic of how many hours each candidates has been on air so far on radio and television, according to the CSA:

#Presidentielle2017 Un oeil sur le temps de parole des candidats entre le 1er février et le 5 mars, décompté par le CSA #AFP pic.twitter.com/l5vJCvMWKT

— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) 10 March 2017

The CSA reacted to this. In a press release on 8th March 2017, they stated: "The Council noticed that the speaking time allocated on television and radio to Francois Fillon was abnormally high. We are conscious however of the particular media coverage condition associated to this campaign and this candidate". This statement reveals that although Fillon is everywhere in the media, a lot of this coverage is because of the current investigation he is in for misuse of public funds (Penelope Gate).

Sources:
http://www.csa.fr/Television/Le-suivi-des-programmes/Le-pluralisme-politique-et-les-campagnes-electorales/L-election-presidentielle-2017
http://www.csa.fr/Television/Le-suivi-des-programmes/Le-pluralisme-politique-et-les-campagnes-electorales/Le-pluralisme-en-periode-electorale
http://www.lejdd.fr/Politique/Dupont-Aignan-en-a-marre-d-etre-rejete-853448