– Speakers at the festival’s Business Forum discussed censorship, media consolidation, public-service neutrality, and the fragile contract between audiences and storytellers
l-r: Anant Singh, Vance Van Petten, Angélique Tessier, Margo Smit and Graham Benson during the panel
The pressure on broadcasters, producers and journalists to “control the narrative” formed the backbone of one of the most politically charged sessions at this year’s Monte-Carlo Television Festival. Held on Monday 15 June as part of the festival’s Business Forum (13-15 June) and titled “Controlling the Narrative: Broadcasters & Producers Navigating TV Regulations”, the panel brought together filmmaker and producer Anant Singh, Chapman University professor and former Producers Guild of America CEO Vance Van Petten, TVMonaco general secretary Angélique Tessier, ONO president and Dutch public-broadcaster ombudsperson Margo Smit, and moderator Graham Benson, chairman of GCB Consultants.
Opening the discussion, Benson framed the issue as a direct threat to the values underpinning both factual and fictional storytelling. Television professionals, he argued, have “a proud record of exposing corruption, criticising unfair practices” and seeking to deliver “the one most crucial thing: the truth”. But he warned that “there is a cold wind blowing”, with political and corporate forces increasingly influencing editorial decisions. “People’s jobs are at risk, and people are frightened a lot of the time about taking the sorts of decisions they took with ease and comfort until relatively recently,” he said.
Smit, who heads ONO, an international organisation consisting of around 70 news ombudspeople, stressed that transparency has become central to the survival of public trust. Ombudspeople, she explained, operate between dissatisfied audiences and cautious newsrooms, trying to make journalistic methods more visible. “Transparency is paramount in gaining or regaining people’s trust,” she said, noting that much of that trust has been lost in recent years. The pandemic, she added, accelerated the crisis, as viewers locked at home consumed both traditional news and unvetted social-media content, then asked broadcasters why they were not telling “the other side of the story”. Journalism, she suggested, did itself no favours by insisting that the public should believe one version simply “because we tell you so”, instead of being more open about what was still unknown.
Singh brought the discussion back to his own experience of apartheid-era South Africa, where censorship affected both cinema and television. His early anti-apartheid films had to be smuggled out of the country in order to gain international visibility. The first, Place of Weeping, was made in 1986 for around $3,000 and was later released theatrically in the USA. He described this as a kind of “reverse propaganda method” used against the South African authorities. Today, Singh said, the battlefield has changed, but the struggle has not. “We must always persevere to tell the story we believe in,” he said. The existence of social media, festivals and alternative outlets gives filmmakers new routes to audiences, but also requires them to navigate an increasingly polarised media environment.
Van Petten offered the starkest warning, focusing on the United States. “We are in a very dire situation,” he said, arguing that the current administration has shown unprecedented involvement in programming decisions. He pointed to pressure exerted through merger approvals and threats from the Federal Communications Commission, saying this has created “a chilling effect” on the First Amendment. “This is the time we have to stand up. Now is when we have to speak,” he said. While he found some hope in the ability of figures such as Stephen Colbert to reach audiences online after broadcast material is cut or removed, Van Petten stressed that political pressure is not the only danger. “I am very concerned about the concentration of wealth and how it is quieting the voice of democracy,” he said, pointing to media consolidation as a structural threat that could outlast any single government.
For Tessier, the situation is different in Monaco, a microstate with its own public-service context, but the challenges facing pubcasters are shared across Europe. As secretary general of TVMonaco, launched in 2023, and a former TF1 executive, she said that public media are increasingly forced to prove their neutrality in a climate shaped by social media and alternative narratives. The recent scrutiny of France Télévisions and Radio France, she noted, was a difficult moment for their teams. Tessier argued that broadcasters must strengthen the “firewalls between editorial and governance”, and should be involved earlier in regulatory debates, rather than reacting once decisions have already been shaped.
The panel also touched on AI, fake news and media literacy, though these were treated as symptoms of a wider crisis of trust. Smit warned that young people are often taught tools before ethics, while Tessier underlined the need for broadcasters to identify AI use transparently. The broader question, however, remained one of accountability: if journalists and broadcasters fail to explain their methods, politicians and regulators may step in to do it for them.
Asked by the audience where optimism might still be found, the speakers avoided easy answers. Singh said creators must “find the allies and not give up”, while Smit offered perhaps the clearest defence of the profession: “There is one thing I think AI will never do, and that is hold power to account. That is your role.”
The session closed with Smit quoting Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: “Do not obey in advance.” Benson echoed the sentiment, arguing that the industry should not imagine itself as defeated. “We just have to stand up straight and fight,” he signed off.
