FRENCH TV ON GAULLIST PATH

President Pompidou and his new premier Pierre Messmer have just 're. solved' the scandal which blew up two months ago in the state-run radio and television service.

In place of Pierre de Leusse the former president of the TV and radio chain, Jean-Jacques director-general de Bressin, they have put their own nominee, Arthur Conte.

The new man becomes president-director-general, filling the posts left vacant by his two predecessors.

They resigned on May 13 after the press had revealed ORTF staff were taking bribes from manufacturers to display their products on television programmes.

The ORTF has long been little more than a propaganda agency Gaullism. Opposition politicians protest bitterly that its political coverage is completely one-sided.

During the May-June General Strike of 1968 the ORTF occupied by the police after its staff had joined the strike. One popular street poster said: 'The ORTF brings the police into your front room.' After the return to work the service was heavily purged— practically all the producers and other staff who had anything to with the strike were replaced by servile Gaullists.

accounts for the abysmal quality of the present service, which is far more trivial even than the BBC or It also explains the extensive corruption which was revealed by the inquest into the press allegations.

with their new appointee, Pompidou and Messmer have made sure the viewers and listeners will get the mixture as before-with even more virulent propaganda than at present.

For this purpose the appointment of Conte is ideal. A 52year-old former journalist who was interned by the Nazis during the war as a member of the French Socialist Party, he now sits in the National Assembly as a representative of the ruling UDR.

Significantly, his conversion to Gaullism is of recent date. It took place simultaneously with the mass demonstrations of May 1968, which he vehemently condemned as 'inadmissibly packed with foreigners'.

In fact, Conte claims he still isn't a Gaullist, When he stood for the first time as UDR candidate in June 1968, he said the old quarrels were thing of the past.

But he added: 1 am not a Gaullist and I have not promised anything. I am only an anti-communist.' He can say that again. In spell three years after a short La Socialist cabinet minister, Conte quit the party.

I disagree most profoundly LA POLICE VOUS PARLE tous les soirs d 20h MDOve: 'the police speak to you every evening at 8 o'clock'-a poster from 1968 with the tactic of forming an alliance with the communists which has been pursued by the leaders of the Socialist Party,' he said.

His chagrin was doubtless increased by the fact that six months the had beaten him in the parliamentary election.

Conte's claim to a socialist past need not be taken too seriously. He was a partisan of 'Algerie Francaise' during the 1950s and attacked de Gaulle for "betraying' the French Colonial settlers.

He attacked the General as heading 'the group of men who have made use of the confidence of the settlers only to lift themselves into office' Conte's new post is giving rise to lively misgivings among the liberal French press. Le Monde' commented:

'People will find it hard to believe that the nomination of a UDR MP to head the broadcasting authority is the best way to preserve its independence only months from the legislative elections.

'In preparation for these elections M. Pompidou has just established a government which is clearly intended... for combat.

"The fear will be, in these conditions, that the appointment of the new chief of the service will tend to put an unequalled battery of means of information and thus of indoctrination at the disposal of the government for the coming battle.'