Television news

Where does BFMTV sit?

On the FrIdéo scale, BFMTV scores +0.07, which places it in the "centre" band and 16th of 30. The 95% confidence interval runs from −0.55 to +0.69. That interval contains zero: on this evidence BFMTV cannot be distinguished from the centre of the panel, and the band should be read as an indication rather than a verdict. 6 of the 9 evidence families cover it directly.

+0.07
FrIdéo score: −0.55 … +0.69
95% confidence interval: centre
Band: 16 / 30
Rank

What each source of evidence says

FrIdéo does not measure ideology once. It fuses nine independent families of evidence, each standardised across the same thirty-outlet panel. A blank row means that family reports nothing for this outlet, which is not the same as reporting zero.

Evidence family	Position
D0Ownership ideology	+0.20
D3Hyperlink and follower network position	+0.18
D2Survey perceived ideology	+0.62
D6aStated editorial orientation	no data
D6bThird-party encyclopedic profiling	no data
D1Broadcast guest ideological bias	−0.21
D4Media Bias Fact Check rating	no data
D8Ad Fontes Media bias rating	0.00
D7Distancing-aware lexical score	−0.26

What placed it there

The signed contribution of each evidence group to the final score. These sum, up to rounding, to the score above.

Ownership+0.03
Academic and network evidence+0.10
Third-party ratings0.00
Editorial content−0.04
Founding-tradition prior0.00

Ownership

Final owner: Rodolphe Saadé (CMA CGM)

The source dataset still lists Patrick Drahi (Altice). The model uses Saadé / CMA CGM, following the 2023 acquisition.

Ownership attributions follow the FrIdéo ownership family, which draws on the Acrimed / Le Monde diplomatique "Médias français : qui possède quoi ?" mapping distributed as a community dataset on data.gouv.fr, cross-checked against Cagé (2017), with press coverage used only for changes of control after 2023.

Nearest outlets on the scale

The outlets immediately either side of this one. Where the intervals overlap, the ordering between them is not something this scale can resolve.

To the left

France 24

To the right

Le Parisien

All thirty outlets →

How the score is built

Nine evidence families are standardised across this panel, weighted by how much independent information each carries, and fused into one continuous position, with outlets covered by few families shrunk toward a founding-tradition prior. The scale is zero-mean and unit-variance by construction across these thirty outlets, so a score is a statement about where an outlet sits relative to this panel and not an absolute ideological coordinate.

How to read this responsibly

Zero on this scale is the mean of these thirty outlets, not a neutral point in French politics. An outlet at zero is average for this panel, which is a different claim.
Scores are comparable within this panel only. They cannot be compared against a scale built from a different set of outlets without re-standardising.
This outlet’s interval includes zero, so its band label is the most likely reading of weak evidence rather than a settled placement.

Read the full FrIdéo method Download the scores (CSV)Download the scores (JSON)

Common questions

Is BFMTV left wing or right wing?

On the FrIdéo scale, BFMTV scores +0.07, placing it in the "centre" band. Its 95% confidence interval (−0.55 to +0.69) contains zero, however: on the available evidence this outlet cannot be distinguished from the centre of the panel. The label is an indication, not a verdict.

Who owns BFMTV?

The final owner used by the model is: Rodolphe Saadé (CMA CGM). The attribution follows the Acrimed / Le Monde diplomatique "Médias français : qui possède quoi ?" mapping, distributed as a community dataset on data.gouv.fr and cross-checked against Julia Cagé (2017).

How is BFMTV's orientation measured?

FrIdéo fuses nine independent families of evidence, among them ownership, position in the hyperlink network, survey-perceived orientation, editorial charters, two rating panels and a lexical score computed from the text. 6 of those nine cover BFMTV directly. Each family is standardised across the same thirty-outlet panel, then the positions are fused into a single continuous score.

Is BFMTV further right than Le Parisien?

Le Parisien is the outlet immediately to the right of BFMTV on the scale. The two positions are close and their confidence intervals overlap substantially: the ordering between these two is not something this scale can resolve. Comparing outlets far apart on the scale is reliable; separating two neighbours is not.

How to cite

Cite the paper. The scale, the method and this outlet’s position all come from it, and a citation to a web page is not something a reviewer can check or a bibliography can resolve.

@inproceedings{sobhy2026frideo,
  title     = {{FrIdéo}: French News Outlet Ideology Scoring via Multi-Source
               Evidence Fusion and Distancing-Aware Lexical Scoring},
  author    = {Sobhy, Amr},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of ICNLSP 2026},
  year      = {2026}
}

If you are citing the numbers as data rather than the method, cite the released dataset as well. It carries the scores, intervals and per-family evidence for all thirty outlets under CC BY 4.0.

Dataset on data.gouv.fr Dataset on Kaggle

Scores from FrIdéo v1.0