Emmanuelle Praet suspended: for Marcourt, "by dint of pushing the borderline, sometimes it goes wrong"

Television

Media Minister in Wallonia-Brussels Federation Jean-Claude Marcourt (PS) declined Tuesday to comment on the decision of RTL-TVi to dismiss his columnist Emmanuelle Praet for his polemical remarks held Sunday on the channel. Asked by Belga in the corridors of the Parliament of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Mr Marcourt said nonetheless know that this decision of the private channel had fallen after three previous blames to the columnist.

"I'm waiting to see what RTL is going to do now …", commented the media minister.

Without commenting on the merits of the case, the minister nevertheless sees in this controversy the result of an evolution at work in the media world.

"We play more and more with people who are asked to be more and more + borderline +, and sometimes it goes wrong …", according to Marcourt.

On Tuesday, some people were reminded of the uproar around Eddy Caekelberghs, a RTBF journalist briefly suspended last January after one of his e-mails was published in the press criticizing the federal government's policy on migration.

At the time, Marcourt declared himself "troubled" by what he described as "manhunt". But for the minister, the two cases are not comparable.

First, unlike the RTBF on which it exercises the tutelage, RTL-TVi is an institution which "does not depend on me since it exercises under Luxembourgish license", recalls it.

"Moreover, in the Caekelberghs case, there was no public expression on his part, but disclosure of a private email, and in the case of Ms. Praet, it is a public statement of which it's about, "he argues.

Sunday, on the set of the show "It's not every day Sunday," Ms. Praet had interpellated the yellow vests present in these terms: "In the last election, Ecolo jumped in. All these taxes that you have they are environmental taxes, but at the next elections, think about it anyway, "she said.

Its management had announced shortly after its suspension of antenna, as well on television as on radio and as a precaution, for remarks considered as "outrageous".

This sanction has been widely denounced in the ranks of the MR, but also in the N-VA and Open Vld.

For Marcourt, however, this is only a "political recovery", he lamented.