It was a sudden shootout. On 6 January, the major left-wing newspaper Libération published an article titled: “Forbidden RT France remains reachable and keeps on producing its Russian propaganda.” On the 14th, one of the country’s top newspapers, Le Monde, published an article on the issue: “The counterattack of pro-Russia media.” Both articles went on to show how RT was still operating, its journalists working, and their reports being broadcast and reachable through VPNs. Then came (for anyone who knows French affairs) the ultimate verdict.

On the 16th, the influential journalist Patrick Cohen talked about this issue live on TV. He criticised people who were interviewed on RT France, including a French member of the European parliament who thinks the EU needs to engage in diplomacy and dialogue with Moscow. 

By Matthieu Buge (https://www.rt.com/news/570500-rt-france-media-not-operate/)

Commenting with sarcasm on these views, Cohen added: “It is not surprising, but we are talking about a channel which is forbidden to operate.” As known previously, RT France was not forbidden to operate; it only lost its broadcasting license. Moreover, Cohen was commenting on this issue in front of one of his guests, Nicolas Tenzer, one of the most prominent pro-US figures in France, who once declared that “NATO never harassed anyone”. Two days later, the French Treasury officially stopped its activities in France. 

Cohen is the journalist who in 2013 famously called some guests of Frédéric Taddeï's talk show "sick-brains". That was the beginning of the end for Taddeï in the mainstream media.

Now, Cohen has again pronounced a ruling on who could and who could not talk. RT France had to share Taddeï’s fate.

Governments’ decisions and interests are one thing. The influence of journalists behaving like political commissars is another. Propaganda is one thing. Enforcing propaganda is another.

--------------------------

So who is, Patrick Cohen, this media enforcer of French right-wing propaganda and hegemonic American Empire policies?

AN INVESTIGATION BY JULES LETAMBOUR

As mentioned above, in March 2013, a controversy broke out following a debate with Frédéric Taddeï during a program on France 5. Patrick Cohen criticised the host of Tonight (or never!) for giving the floor to those Cohen considered to be “sick brains”. Namely: Tariq Ramadan, Dieudonné, Alain Soral and Marc-Édouard Nabe.

Cohen's remarks were challenged — and a French journalist who focuses on the analysis of televised media, Daniel Schneidermann, said, considering Patrick Cohen's views, that "they are similar to a dogma" and analysing this "black list" Schneidermann judged that: "To deprive oneself of interesting guests — because one disagrees with them — is, for a taxpayer-paid journalist, professional misconduct. And not only is it indefensible, it is counterproductive.” Patrick Mandon, commenting on the controversy, puts forward “Mr. Cohen’s second job would rather be censor of the official state airwaves.” 

The media critics association Acrimed later underlined the contradictions and Patrick Cohen's "bad faith", in particular when he felt that Éric Zemmour, a pseudo fascist, should not be deprived of his voice because, according to Patrick Cohen, viewers are not “fools” and are “able to make sense of things”.

In December 2013, Dieudonné, a comedian, reacted to Patrick Cohen's positions by devoting a segment from his one-man show Le Mur to him. The comedian commented: "You see, him, if the wind turns, I'm not sure it has time to pack its bags. Me, you see, when I hear him speak, Patrick Cohen, I say to myself, you see, the gas chambers… Too bad! 

Radio France filed a complaint. These remarks contributed to the extreme political tension surrounding Dieudonné's activities during the winter of 2013-2014.

Dismissal of Yann Moix from Le Figaro

In the live broadcast of the program C à vous (it’s your turn) on May 13, 2015, Yann Moix declared that he wanted to "burst the abscess" represented by Patrick Cohen. Moix criticized Cohen for having sought to have him fired from Figaro, where he was a literary columnist , due to a disagreement with a column he had written. Yann Moix declared having read an email, transferred by his editor and signed by Patrick Cohen, where this request for dismissal was explicit. Cohen justified himself on the air by reaffirming his disagreement with the content of the column, Moix declared that the problem “is not to say what we think but to ask from behind that we fire someone” and that "the method of saying in front of everyone what you think in a newspaper is much more acceptable". Patrick Cohen admitted having spoken privately to the editor-in-chief of Le Figaro, while denying having asked for a dismissal.

Criticism of the role of Mediapart in the Benalla affair.

Mediapart is a digital, participatory and independent newspaper, without advertising or subsidies, and which lives only on the support of its readers.

During an interview with Edwy Plenel, founder of Mediapart on the program C à vous on February 6, 2019, Patrick Cohen was very critical of his guest and the process consisting in using wiretaps relating to private conversations in the Benalla affair. These wiretaps dated back seven months and enabled Mediapart to reveal conversations Alexandre Benalla had, in violation of judicial orders, where he claimed he had the support of the President of the Republic and alluding to a contract with a Russian oligarch initiated while he was still at the Élysée. Edwy Plenel then criticises Patrick Cohen for not being in solidarity with the unanimous reaction of journalists' societies against the attempted government search of Mediapart’s offices, the day before.

Unfounded accusations against Sabrina Ben Ali

According to a fact-checking investigation by Alexandre Hervaud in Liberation of January 19, 2017, Patrick Cohen endorsed the slander by Martin Hirsch against Sabrina Ben Ali, an emergency room intern who denounced her working conditions in a video viewed 11 million times on social networks when she had agreed to respond to a reporter from France Inter. Patrick Cohen accuses her of being neither an emergency doctor nor an employee of the AP-HP but she produces pay slips from the AP-HP  (the Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) is the French public health institution which exercises the role of university hospital center for Paris and Île-de-France) with which the private hospital was then under contract. 

She had been placed in the 20th arrondissement of Paris and where she had been working in the emergency room for three months. The Liberation survey also proves that this private hospital did indeed have an emergency department. Sabrina Ben Ali was then volunteer “head of the health commission of the Leftist Party”. The controversy was then taken up by several major national dailies, such as Le Monde, Le Parisien and L'Express, as well as by the media observatory Acrimed. The Quotidien du Médecin considered that it was “slandered but comforted”. Despite the verbal erratum, France Inter did not modify the page of its website which mentions “Patrick Cohen's assertion accusing the doctor of testifying about the emergency services without working there.”

In 2019, the Acrimed observatory publishes large extracts from a book published by Sabrina Ben Ali in which she accuses Patrick Cohen of lies. Acrimed considers that Cohen has become a symbol, through his methods, of the “impunity” of certain “mediacrats”. Sabrina Ben Ali specifies that she never mentioned the AP-HP, neither in her viral video, nor in her interview on France Inter, then in 2019. According to her, Patrick Cohen broadcasted a montage produced by France Inter partly using a video from 2016, where she mentioned the AP-HP because she was then working in a public establishment of the AP-HP.

The destruction of RT-France is Cohen’s latest piece of shit work — on behalf of the softy-fascist government of Macron.

JULES.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....