A French television show has sparked a political row after a columnist accused the country's biggest influencer, Léna Situations, of cowardice for distancing herself from a friend over pro-Israel social media posts.
Paul Gasnier, a journalist on the popular evening talk show Quotidien, used the programme's season premiere to criticise the YouTube star for cutting ties with Gisèle Journo, the director of a Parisian influencer agency, following a boycott campaign led by the Franco-Palestinian politician Rima Hassan.
Journo, who appeared in Léna Situations' videos this summer, became the target of online abuse after social media users unearthed posts she had shared between 2024 and 2025. Some of the posts featured an Israeli soldier or symbols linked to Israel, against the backdrop of the war in Gaza.
Hassan, a Member of the European Parliament, used Instagram to call for a boycott of Journo and the influencers working with her agency.
Cutting ties
Léna Situations, who has 3.2 million subscribers, subsequently liked Hassan's post calling for the boycott and deleted several traces of her relationship with Journo from her own social media accounts.
The influencer had just concluded her annual August vlogs, a ten-year tradition in which she films her daily life throughout the month, with a live event in front of thousands of fans at the Accor Arena in Paris.
Gasnier, speaking on the TMC channel on the same night as the arena event, contrasted the influencer's actions with her online persona. He described her vlog universe as smiling, harmless and slightly cheesy, before changing his tone to address the controversy.
He accused her of fleeing from the steamroller of public opinion and said that benevolence could rest in peace.
Gasnier expanded his criticism to the wider influencer industry, noting that all of Journo's influencer friends had immediately distanced themselves from her following the backlash. Léna Situations has previously been a guest on Quotidien, where presenter Yann Barthès interviewed her about her summer vlog format.
Political backlash
The television segment quickly ignited a debate on social media, drawing reactions from prominent journalists, comedians and politicians.
The comedian Sophia Aram and the journalist Jean-François Achilli praised Gasnier, with Achilli commending the remarkable account. Aram described the column as a very precise and accurate account of the cowardice of Léna Situations and her friends in the face of the harassment campaign orchestrated by Hassan.
However, figures from the left-wing La France insoumise party strongly condemned the broadcast. Manuel Bompard, an LFI official, called the segment full of contempt, condescension and confusion. He added that paying tribute to an army committing a genocide was neither trivial nor benevolent, and that denouncing such a position was not antisemitism.
Antoine Léaument, another LFI politician, defended the influencer. He said the only coward was the person who did not understand that political neutrality does not exist in the face of genocide.
Viewers on the social media platform X also directed their anger at Gasnier. One user described the segment as one of the most abject columns they had ever seen.
Another wrote that Quotidien staff failed to view Palestinians as human beings to such an extent that ending a friendship over public support for their extermination could only be interpreted as cowardice. A third called it one of the worst columns in the history of the show.
The debate continued in the news website's comments section. One reader asked rhetorically whether the former French president François Mitterrand had been boycotted for his role in the Vichy regime, or if the communist Maurice Thorez had been condemned for asking people not to fight the Germans in 1939 and 1940 and fleeing to the Soviet Union. Another reader stated that a boycott of Journo was the only option, while a third argued that Gasnier was merely pointing out a lack of morality among influencers rather than commenting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
