French culture minister attacks ‘woke’ bias of media

FRANCE’S outspoken new culture minister Rachida Dati has vowed to confront “wokism” as she hit out at Left-wing bias in state media.

The conservative former justice minister was the surprise nomination of new prime minister Gabriel Attal’s cabinet. Her appointment ruffled feathers in France’s largely Left-leaning cultural establishment to such an extent that her first words when taking up the post were: “Fear not. I will always be here to defend [France’s] cultural exception.”

However, yesterday she lashed out at the self-styled arbiters of cultural correctness, saying: “I am in favour of freedom of art and creation; I am not in favour of censorship.”

“I am very attentive, and it is a battle to the fight against discrimination,” she told journalists at CNews-Europe 1, two TV and radio channels owned by Vincent Bolloré, a conservative tycoon credited with pushing France’s private media landscape to the Right.

But she added: “I find that wokism has become a politics of censorship.”

Ms Dati also took aim at France’s public broadcasters, often criticised for airing views that are almost exclusively Left-wing.

She said: “I’m very attached to this public service. It has the support of the French people. But if it wants to keep it, at some point it will have to reflect the diversity of French opinion.”

“I am appealing to everyone’s code of ethics,” she said, adding that she was due to “meet the directors [of public broadcasting] very shortly.”

On Sunday, she also criticised “luvvies” from France’s highly subsidised cinema world, telling Le Journal du Dimanche – also owned by Mr Bolloré – that they represented “a little caste that has a problem with everything I represent and says to itself: ‘One day we’ll have your guts for garters.’”