Religions and the media

The broadcasting of religious programmes on public television stations is determined by Law No. 86-1067 of 30 September 1986 on the freedom of communication, article 56:
"France 2 shall programme religious programmes devoted to the main religions practised in France on Sunday mornings. Said programmes shall be produced under the responsibility of the representatives of said religions and be presented in the form of the live transmission of cultural ceremonies or religious comments. The company shall bear the costs of production within the limit of a maximum amount set in the annual provisions of the terms of reference."
The full text of this law is available on the website of France’s Superior Audiovisual Council.
The amended decree No. 92-280 of 27 March 1992 lays down the rules regarding the broadcasting of advertisements during religious programmes.

D 26 September 2012    AAnne-Laure Zwilling

Besides the well-known Catholic weekly magazines La Vie and Témoignage chrétien, each religious group counts several publications.

– Judaism
L’Arche, of the Fonds Social Juif unifié, is the main monthly Jewish magazine.

– Protestantism
The French protestant federation (Fédération protestante de France) has set up in 2013 an information portal Regards protestants (Protestant perspectives) which gives access to over 60 different Protestant papers, magazines, television channels...
The most famous Protestant journals are the weekly newspaper Réforme, the monthly magazine of the Protestant churches of Alsace-Moselle Le Nouveau Messager (weekly up till 2011), and the monthly magazine Christianisme aujourd’hui of the Alliance Presse Evangelical press group.

– Orthodox churches
The differents publications of the Orthodox churches are listed on the websites of the Orthodox Bishop’s assembly, Assemblée des Evêques orthodoxes and of l’Eglise orthodoxe de France the Orthodox church of France.

– Islam
The Noor journal was created in 2012 and intends to represent Islam of the enlightenment. There are also many websites of Muslim information, the main ones being Saphir news (to which since 2008 one can add the free monthly paper magazine Salam news) and Oumma.com, as well as the journal du musulman (Muslim’s newspaper). A scholarly journal is due to be created shortly, les Cahiers de l’islam.

All these religious groupe also produce a great many publications for internal information, at a local or regional level.

D 3 December 2013    AAnne-Laure Zwilling

The Federation of Catholic media (Fédération des médias catholiques) provides information on the different Catholic papers and journals in France. An article of Jean-François Barbier Bouvet reflects on the impact of the Catholic press on the French population ("l’impact de la presse catholique dans la population française"), 2011.

The Bayard group

It is difficult not to mention Bayard when speaking of religions publications. The Augustinians of the Assumption congregation has been its sole shareholder for almost one hundred and forty years.
Bayard has 2, 500 employees and 3, 300 freelance journalists. The group has a turnover of 338,5 million euros and in 2004 it acquired Milan Presse.
Bayard publishes a daily newspaper, one hundred and fifty magazines and books (Bayard Presse), with a catalogue of several thousand titles.
In France Bayard publishes 72 magazines, including La Croix, Le Pélerin, La documentation catholique, Le Monde de la Bible, Prions en Eglise as well as a large number of publications geared at youth (Pomme d’Api, Les Belles Histoires, Okapi, Phospohore, Images Doc,...), a certain number of these publications are religious magazines designed to raise religious awareness (Pomme d’api soleil, Grains de soleil).

Weekly Catholic publications

There are several weekly Catholic journals: Bayard publishes Le Pèlerin (277 000 copies in 2011), Le Monde – La Vie publishes La Vie (110 000 in 2012), Edifa, branch of Fleurus – Media, publishes Famille chrétienne (53 000 copies).

D 14 January 2015    AAnne-Laure Zwilling

Over the airwaves of France culture, the Catholic Church proposes Mass broadcast live every Sunday and bank holiday from 10-11am; additional programmes include a weekly transmission by the Protestant Federation of France (Service protestant), a weekly programme on Islamic cultures, one dedicated to the Orthodox and Eastern Churches (alternating between Orthodoxy and Faith and Traditions of Eastern Christians), and two providing a general presentation of different religious traditions, entitled ’The Living and the Gods’ (les vivants et les Dieux) and ’the roots of the sy’ (les racines du ciel).

There are a good number of independent radio stations and the Catholic station Radio Notre Dame is the most well-known.
The Protestant Federation of France provides a weekly radio programme on France-culture, on Sundays from 8.30 to 9 am. In 2021 it acquired a radio studio and produces its own programmes.
Most of the Christian independent radio stations belong to the network RCF (radios chrétiennes francophones, Christian French-speaking radios), born in the 1980s on the initiative of the Catholic church. The network counts nowadays 60 radios stations in France, and has 500 000 auditors per day and 1,3 M per week. It gathers 300 paid employees and 3.000 volunteers.
For Islam, there is a televised programme on Sundays (8:45-9:15 am) that is produced by the Vivre l’Islam (Living Islam) association. Community radio stations broadcast, on a more or less regular basis, information regarding Islam. There are also radio stations that are exclusively geared towards Muslims, i.e. Radio Beur FM, Radio Orient.

D 16 August 2021    AAnne-Laure Zwilling

All the religious programms on the public television station France 2 are broacast on Sunday, under a heading les chemins de la foi (paths of faith). It gathers 7 religious programmes, running from 8:30 to 12:00.

– The Catholic Church broadcasts the programme entitled Le Jour du Seigneur (The Lord’s Day), which is French television’s oldest programme. It is broadcast on France 2 every Sunday from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm and is divided into three parts: a magazine programme, a live televised mass and a news magazine.
The programme’s audience has been increasing over the last three years. In 1999, Médiamétrie figures showed that Le Jour du Seigneur had gained, on average and per Sunday, 50, 000 new television viewers (these figures do not include people living in groups, i.e. prisons, religious communities, senior citizens’ homes, hospitals).
82 % of French people say they know of this religious programme; 10% watch the Sunday morning Catholic programme at least once a month. 72 % of French people say they absolutely agree or agree with the broadcasting of religious programmes on a public service television station (according to a study carried out by the media department of the CSA-TMO institute in 2000.)
– Protestant Churches have a half-hour programme that airs once a week. After having been called Présence protestante (Protestant Presence) for some 60 years, it is now called Solae, and starts at 8h30.
– Once a month, the programme called Agapé, is presented jointly by the Catholic programme le Jour du Seigneur and the Protestant programme Présence protestante, from 10:00 to 11:00.
– The Orthodox churches broadcast monthly a 30 minutes programme, between 9:00 and 9:30, orthodoxie, under the responsibility of the Assemblée des Évêques Orthodoxes de France (assembly of Orthodox bishops of France).
– The churches of Eastern Christianity also broadcast monthly a 30 minutes programme, chrétiens orientaux.
– Judaism offers three different programmes. Every second week, two programmes alternate: Judaica and A Bible ouverte (open Bible), 9:15-9:30. The other week, the programme is la Source de vie (spring of life) and runs from 9:15 to 10:00.
– Since 1997, Buddhism also has a fifteen-minute weekly programme that is provided by the Buddhist Union of France from 8:30 am to 8:45 am, sagesses bouddhistes (Buddhist wisdom).
– For Islam, the association [Vivre l’Islam offers a 30 minutes program on Islam every week, 8:45-9:15.

The Catholic church also runs its own private television channel, Ktotv.

D 16 August 2021    AAnne-Laure Zwilling

Several articles published in 2017 in Inaglobal, the electronic journal of the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, provide an overview of the place of religions in the media in France, and of its recent history.
Clément Malherbe retraces the history of religious programmes in the French public service ("Comment les religions ont trouvé leur place à la radio et la télévision"), and Christian Delporte recounts the evolution of the religious media ("Les médias religieux en France : une petite histoire").
Several articles take into account the situation in various religious groups: Jean-Louis Schlegel describes the efforts made by the Roman Catholic Church and Catholic believers, since the French Revolution, to adapt to the changes in society and to remain present in the media despite the drastic change of the place of the Church in the French society ("Les médias catholiques entre anathème et ouverture").
Lionel Obadia highlights the discrepancy between the reality of Buddhism and its media coverage ("Les médias bouddhistes en France, en ordre dispersé").. Marc Knobel evokes the recent evolution of the Jewish media ("Les médias juifs en France, entre recomposition et renouveau intellectuel") and Samuel Ghiles Meilhac the difficulties of these media at the time of internet ("Les médias juifs français à la croisée des chemins"). Jean-Paul Willaime and Sébastien Fath describe the rich media presence of the Protestants ("Les médias protestants : quand huguenot rime avec réseau"). Anne-Sophie Lamine evokes the rapid evolution of the Muslim media landscape, particularly since the 2000s ("Médias musulmans : le dynamisme de la nouvelle génération").

D 18 August 2017   

The Avia law was enacted on June 24, 2020. It creates an online hate observatory responsible for monitoring and analysing the evolution of hate content, in conjunction with the operators, associations and researchers concerned. The observatory is attached to the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (Higher Council of audiovisual).
This law is aimed in particular at incitement to religious hatred and anti-religious insults.

D 7 July 2020