By Marco Hugo Barsotti MHB 
There was, in the decades of Italy’s First Republic, a singular institute: the listening centre of the Radical Party. Pannella and his followers had created it to monitor the speaking time granted to parties on RAI networks. The results were invariably the same: governing parties over‑represented, the Radicals — then a party of some relevance — systematically penalised. No one contested the numbers. Politicians and RAI technicians always had an explanation. It was a scheduling problem. It was the nature of the programme. It was, after all, the complexity of the system. Forty years later, on the other side of the Alps and in the face of censorship against the majority party but not the government, Radio France found an even more elegant explanation: the blame lies with the software. Which, strangely enough, always acts against those who are not loyal to the president’s party and the progressive blocs.
The letter and the spirit
The French law imposes fairness of treatment among political formations. It says nothing about time slots. It is a rule that protects the quantity, not the quality of exposure.
Radio France respected the numbers. It simply chose to accumulate them in the hours when the audience is structurally nil. And so’, The leading French party by electoral support – the RN right‑wing of Le Pen and Bardella – got its radio space between midnight and six in the morning. The form, impeccable. The substance, nonexistent.
The precedent of the musical quota
It is not a new technique, and it does not concern only politics. French radio stations are legally required to broadcast a minimum quota of Francophone music. Some comply scrupulously: they schedule French tracks on Saturday and Sunday mornings between five and noon. Obligation respected. Listeners: a few thousand late‑night owls and some genre enthusiasts. Which, in the case of Radio FG and its FG Lounge, also sees a host of avid fans.
In both cases the mechanism is identical. A protective rule is emptied, turning it into a bureaucratic compliance. The important thing is to be able to show the numbers to the regulator.
Editorial rooms and political cultures
It is not necessary to imagine an editorial meeting where someone said: “let’s put RN after midnight.” We believe – as listeners and admirers of France Info – that this is a structural issue.
We are facing a homogeneous editorial culture that produces homogeneous editorial choices, in a completely natural and uncoordinated way. The editorial teams of France Inter and Franceinfo — like those of most Italian media — are largely composed of journalists with political sensibilities ranging from centre‑left to left.
It is not a secret, it is not a fault: it is a sociological fact documented across Europe. Or perhaps, as the US president Donald Trump might tell us, in all self‑defined liberal democracies.
The practical result is that the RN – the leading French party – is perceived as an inconvenient guest, to be relegated to slots where listenership is irrelevant. Not by higher order. By conditioned reflex. And when the regulator knocks, the software is brought out.
The industry of formal pluralism
The radical listening centre documented exactly this mechanism in Italy of the seventies and eighties. The numbers were impeccable on the technical level and devastating on the substantive level. RAI invariably responded with explanations of a technical, editorial, structural nature. No one was ever significantly sanctioned.
Formal pluralism is a flourishing industry. It produces compliance certifications, reports to the regulator, commitment statements. It produces everything except the thing it should produce: real and proportional access to information for all representative political forces.
The excuse of the software
Radio France responded with a statement that is a small masterpiece of its kind. In January 2026 a new speech‑time management tool was introduced.
For those who chew on radio: a customized studio automation system.
The tool is described as “very complex”. The distinction between daytime and nighttime “was not yet possible”.
Let’s reread this sentence, because anyone familiar with automation systems knows it is a falsehood: obviously these systems know the difference between day and night, indeed minute by minute, being tied to the broadcast — for example — of spots and advertising inserts with precise cadences and schedules.
Three months. From January to March. In three months, no one in the editorial team of franceinfo — where 70% of the space for the leading French party aired after midnight — raised the issue. No journalist, no schedule manager, no director. Because the software did not alert them.
Now — they say — the problem is solved with an update.
The default notice
The move is significant. This is the first time the French audiovisual regulator has explicitly censored public radio‑television service for violating pluralism rules in relation to the RN.
The institutional signal is clear, although the practical consequences remain to be seen. Radio France has already announced that it has repeatedly invited Marine Le Pen and Bardella to the 8:30 political interview — and that the two have declined for over two years. An elegant counter‑narrative, this one as well.
The Radio France–Arcom case is the snapshot of a system where pluralism rules exist, regulators exist, sanctions exist — and the practical result is that the leading French party gets its radio space when listeners are asleep.
We do not know whether the same rule applies in Italy in what they call “Tele Meloni”, but we recall precisely the times when it applied against the party that — in its day — also saw Daniele Capezzone as Political Secretary.
The Radical listening centre would have immediately reported the anomaly. But here in France, it does not exist. And — unfortunately — no longer in Italy either. (M.H.B. for Radio Nizza)