On December 15, 2023, a substantial part of the French media landscape suddenly became fascinated by an assault that had taken place two months earlier in Lyon: the beating of a teenage girl by two girls of the same age. Why the sudden national interest for such a specific event, in a country that counts approximately 2,000 victims of physical violence every day?

To understand, you need only retrace the source of the video and consider one circumstance: The attacker was wearing a hijab. On December 14, an X account specialized in violent videos published footage of the attack. The scene was picked up by one of the most well-known far-right accounts, Fdesouche, and by a Telegram channel run by the radical far right. The TV channel CNews – a hub for far-right talking points – was the first news organization to report on the incident, that evening, on its website.

During the night, a journalist from the far-right magazine Valeurs actuelles published additional information from police sources, and that was shared by Damien Rieu, a member of Eric Zemmour's Reconquête! party with a strong social media following. At 9 pm on December 15, BFM-TV, France's most-watched news channel, issued its first report on the case, with journalists on the ground. For two days, it followed developments in the case, issuing several "news alerts" as the police investigation progressed and was quickly concluded. On X, a journalist from the conservative daily newspaper Le Figaro thanked Pierre Sautarel, the far-right activist behind the Fdesouche website, for his "monitoring work [which] bears witness to daily savagery."

This specific story came at a time when crime and immigration were dominating the news cycle. In November, there was a national political controversy after the death of a teenager, Thomas, killed at a village ball in southeastern France. The government's restrictive immigration bill, meanwhile, was debated in Parliament in December.

Since the 2022 presidential election, French media has increasingly talked about such topics, while allowing for more far-right voices to pitch in on those stories and even amplify them.

The far-right wagers of a "cultural battle" have openly welcomed this shift. They have noticed that they are welcome even beyond the news organizations belonging to billionaire Vincent Bolloré's company Vivendi (Comprising the TV channels CNews, C8; the radio station Europe 1; and, since last year, the print weeklies Paris Match and Le Journal du dimanche [JDD]). Le Figaro and BFM-TV are now perceived by the far right as "welcoming" spaces.

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