CNews presenter Barbara Klein dissociated herself on Thursday, on behalf of the channel and its editorial staff, from the anti-Muslim remarks made 48 hours earlier on her show by columnist Jean-Claude Dassier.
The “Muslims, they don’t care regarding the Republic, they don’t even know what the word means”. Tuesday, December 27, Jean-Claude Dassier made virulent remarks towards the Muslim community in France, while participating in a program as a columnist on CNews. Two days following the events, the presenter, Barbara Klein, dissociated herself from it on behalf of the channel.
The former leader of the LCI channel and ex-president of the OM football club made these remarks during a debate on juvenile delinquency, indicating that “Muslims, they don’t care regarding the Republic, they don’t even know what the word means”. Words that have not been contradicted during the show and which have since caused an outcry on social networks.
ud83dudea8Jean Claude Dassier (CNews)
“But Muslims don’t care regarding the Republic, they don’t even know what the word means, following all! » pic.twitter.com/ZaXVMCQV8p
— BalanceTonMedia (@BalanceTonMedia) December 27, 2022
The president of SOS Racisme Dominique Sopo in reaction announced this Thursday, December 29 on Twitter his intention to seize “the Paris prosecutor’s office so that justice prosecutes these racist ratiocinations”.
A little later, journalist Barbara Klein “wanted to come back to the words” of her columnist. “I wanted to tell you that his words only engage him and in no way the channel or the editorial staff of CNews”, she assured during her show “La belle team”.
ud83dudea8CNews dissociates itself from the comments of Jean Claude Dassier made in the program La Belle Équipe:
“His words are solely his and in no way the channel or the editorial staff of CNews” pic.twitter.com/28ryirjd5s
— BalanceTonMedia (@BalanceTonMedia) December 29, 2022
Contacted by AFP, Arcom (ex-CSA) said it had been seized regarding this sequence. The regulator is regularly for slippages observed on CNews and C8, two channels of the Canal + group, a subsidiary of Vivendi, controlled by the billionaire Vincent Bolloré. He recently opened the way to a sanction procedure following host Cyril Hanouna insulted a deputy on C8.
In 2021, she fined CNews 200,000 euros for “incitement to hatred” and “violence” following comments by Eric Zemmour calling unaccompanied minor migrants “thieves”, “murderers” and of “rapists”. The day following this diatribe, held in the fall of 2020, the presenter Christine Kelly had dissociated herself from it, like the society of editors of the chain.