Pushing the boundaries of infotainment by mixing starification of personalities with muddy ideas and staging of oneself as a glamouro-citizen individual, Magali Berdah launched her political program available on YouTube by handing the microphone to far-right candidate Éric Zemmour. Chat was lost for 30 minutes in the limbo of a long campaign clip.

She bursts the screen. Almost as much as his far-right interlocutor. In an increasingly common mix of genres on television, Magali Berdah, artistic agent and popess of reality TV, launched a series of immersive interviews with presidential candidates on her Youtube channel.

Clearly, Magali Berdah plays with an effect of surprise, as we did not expect her on the field of the campaign. "I want to resume my duty as a citizen and go vote", she justifies, on a conquering music, in an introductory video entitled "My project" - taking up, is it a coincidence ?, on his own account the “Our project” gimmick from the previous campaign of the current president. “Perhaps like you, who are not going to vote because we understand nothing about it, I want to popularize politics, to make it more accessible, she continues. All this so that we can make our decisions and be able to move this magnificent country forward. “There is emphasis in the words of the columnist of the program Touche pas à mon poste!. The promise of a new kind of vibratory infotainment for the disillusioned Internet citizens that we are.

The first guest of the 40-year-old businesswoman is also a regular on Cyril Hanouna's sets: Éric Zemmour. We feel that he and she are part of Baba's big family, given the fluidity of their on-screen relationships, during the day of January 14, 2022 where she follows him. On the program: a meeting with the mayor of Honnecourt-sur-Escaut (North), before a meeting in Saint-Quentin (Aisne).

No contradictions

At the start of her video, Magali Berdah claims to have "a lot of questions to ask her" and, in an exercise in self-satisfaction that only positive-thinking influencers can master, thinks that this interview "will fascinate a lot of people". “I know this video is going to be controversial, I think because no one expects it,” she nuances as if to raise the mayonnaise of the buzz. Before adding all smiles while walking, hands in the pockets of her long black coat, as if she herself were a hallucinated spectator of the perilous show she created: “Even I don't expect it. But I'm here, come on, follow me. »

The first problem, among many others, is that the agent spends very little time with Éric Zemmour. She only really meets him for two sequences. One of 6 minutes and 24 seconds, for an interview. The other of 2 minutes and 37 seconds, for an informal exchange, surrounded by Sarah Knafo, the adviser and companion of the polemicist, and Samuel Lafont, ex-Les Républicains defector of 35 years, who takes care of the strategy today number of the “Reconquest” candidate. For a (long) video of 35 minutes and 56 seconds, that's not much.

The other problem is that the forty-something is neither a journalist nor a columnist. She would like to be an ordinary citizen concerned about the purchasing power or the future of her children, but that's not it either: Magali Berdah is part of the media system, she earns her living by staging that of others. The Berdah Effect, while it works innocently on the Instagram scene to turn reality TV stars into influencer beauty and diet entrepreneurs, is disastrous when applied to the political sphere.

This interview gives Éric Zemmour a new opportunity to spread his nauseating theses - on Muslims in particular -, without any contradiction. Exactly as he did in Face à l'info with the very understanding Christine Kelly. Example. Magali Berdah's question: “It is often said that you are racist. People say that. Many young people from immigrant backgrounds follow us, us influencers. And many influencers, too, are of immigrant origin. I myself come from an immigrant background. What do you want to tell them? The beginning of Éric Zemmour's response: "The problem is that there are a lot of young people from immigrant backgrounds, particularly Arab-Muslims, who don't want to live like the French, who despise them , who call it the Gauls, who believe that Sharia is more important and above the laws of the Republic. Magali Berdah listens to him without interrupting him, lets him unfold his thoughts, but does not ask him for any figures or sources. Ditto for the other two questions she asks him, on secularism and on entrepreneurs.

During her second exchange with the former polemicist, she asks him a single question, which she will ask all the candidates, she affirms: "Are you going to create a ministry of social networks? ? General hilarity on the side of Zemmour and his team. Which nevertheless allows, it must be emphasized, to learn a little more about its digital strategy. Not without giving Sarah Knafo the opportunity to praise her companion candidate, able to find "in two seconds" the formula that will hit the mark on social networks.

A long campaign clip

Apart from these almost 9 minutes put end to end, Magali Berdah gravitates, all the rest of her immersion, around the galaxy of relatives and supporters of Éric Zemmour: from Samuel Lafont to Sarah Knafo, to whom she blows a kiss and who is close to her, passing by Stanislas Rigault (president of Génération Zemmour with the physique of a young first) and Jean Messiha (belching polemicist who passed with flexibility from the National Rally to Reconquest). Meetings with the latter two are mind-blowing. The first is presented as "a star who makes all the TV sets and who defends himself very well". The second, also as "a star" and "an iconic character of TPMP". Because the agent is a regular columnist for Touche pas à mon poste!, just like Rigault and Messiha. Which obviously doesn't make them friends, but this way of addressing them raises questions about their closeness and blurs the lines on their identity. Especially for those who don't know them.

Under its false air of journalistic reporting - on-board camera, interviews with a gallery of supporters, headbands and synths... - the format is above all akin to a long campaign clip for the presidential candidate. If some sequences are not uninteresting, such as when she questions ordinary voters ready to vote for far-right politics, or the creator of the "Women with Zemmour" support committee, almost everything else certainly lacks distance and perspective. And the advertisements embedded by Magali Berdah herself at the beginning and at the end of the video, which has accumulated more than 350,000 views at the time of writing these lines, and not only by YouTube, somewhat tarnish her laudable intentions on civic duty.

It remains to be seen whether all the other candidates will be received in the same way and will benefit from the same communication device. If no name has yet filtered, photographs of the popess of reality TV and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, posted on the Instagram account of the latter, suggest that it will soon be the turn of the Insoumis. To see if he will be ready to launch a ministry of social networks.