French President Emmanuel Macron has unveiled plans to introduce France’s first ever ‘Ministry of Truth’ in order to combat misinformation online.
The draft law, designed to stop what Macron calls “manipulation of information” in the run-up to elections, will be debated in parliament Thursday and then put into action during next year’s European parliamentary polls.
BYPASS THE CENSORS
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The law is the brainchild of Macron himself, who claims he was targeted during the 2017 campaign by ‘false rumors’ that he was gay and had a secret bank account in the Bahamas (‘rumors’ that turned out to be true).
AFP reports: Under the law, French authorities would be able to immediately halt the publication of information deemed to be false ahead of elections.
Social networks would have to introduce measures allowing users to flag up false reports, pass their data on such articles to authorities, and make public their efforts against fake news.
And the law would authorise the state to take foreign broadcasters off the air if they were attempting to destabilise France — a measure seemingly aimed at Russian state-backed outlet RT in particular.
– Censorship? –
European governments have struggled to work out how to respond to the fake news phenomenon, not least after accusations of Kremlin meddling in France and the US presidential vote that brought Donald Trump to power.
The British government has set up a “fake news” unit, while Italy has an online service to report false articles and the European Union is working on a “code of practice” that would provide guidelines for social media companies.
France wants to go further — though not as far as neighbouring Germany, where social networks face fines of up to 50 million euros ($58 million) under a controversial law which critics say is overly draconian.
Some opponents fear French authorities could use powers in the new law to block embarrassing or compromising reports.
“It’s a step towards censorship,” said Vincent Lanier, head of France’s national journalists’ union, the SNJ. He labelled the bill “inefficient and potentially dangerous”.
The government insists measures will be built into the law to protect freedom of speech, with only reports that are “manifestly false” and that have gone viral — notably with the help of bots — taken down.
“Reducing freedom of expression is not the idea at all. On the contrary, it’s to protect it,” said Culture Minister Francoise Nyssen.
Leaving fake news to spread would be a “direct attack” on journalism, she argued.
But for Jerome Fenoglio, editorial director of Le Monde newspaper, the legislation carries too big a risk of suppressing information in the public interest.
“Elections should be a time of great freedom — these are periods when important information emerges,” he said, noting as an example the fake jobs scandal that torpedoed the campaign of presidential frontrunner Francois Fillon last year.
“We should be worried about an authoritarian regime winning power in France in the future and the methods it might use,” he said.
– Arbiters of truth –
Others worry the law could backfire by giving extra credibility to reports labelled “fake” by the authorities amongst those convinced the government is out to hide the truth.
Fabrice Epelboin, who teaches media studies at Sciences Po university in Paris, predicts “catastrophic consequences” of the legislation which he says “is already seen as a law of censorship”.
“It will only reinforce a sense of defiance towards the press and politicians who are already very discredited,” he warned.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whose followers stand accused of spreading fake news, is among those who have spoken against the bill, asking: “Is France still a democracy if it muzzles its citizens?”
The EU, for its part, has said it does not want to create an Orwellian “ministry of truth” and will not legislate on fake news.
In France, there are also questions about how the law will work in practice.
Judges will have just 48 hours to rule on an urgent request to take down a report.
Legal expert Vincent Couronne says the law is “not only imperfect and unnecessary, but also dangerous for the peace and diversity of public debate”.
It will turn judges into “arbiters of true and false”, said Patrick Eveno, a media history professor at the Sorbonne university.
As for potentially kicking out foreign media, Fenoglio is deeply uncomfortable with the idea, not least given that Le Monde is blocked in China.
“I cannot defend measures under which it’s considered normal to block all kinds of information because it’s considered close to a foreign government,” he said.
Sean Adl-Tabatabai
For those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, the Ministry of Truth translated means Ministry of Lies.
Just like Department of Defense is the Department of War
slavery [for us] is freedom [for them]
Hahhahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha
I knew who he was straight away I couldnt beleive that he would win{well knew he was going too} except for how continually the publid are all day every day deceived with falsehoods and untruths by the mainstream medias lies and distortions and omissions and secrecies
From what I understand he didn’t win. It is only winning in a fair democratic election (for a representative – that’s joke, but anyway). They sent out two lots of vote macron to many or sent out Marine ballots that were already spoiled – so they could send in what would be counted as spoiled ballots that would be ignored.
Of course I could be wrong.
“Je Suis Charlie’, but NOT in France.
and once the Mob getfed up with the Democratic betrayal of their trust then they will turn on them ,when cued and orchestrated from above , and restore or replace with what ?And who is pulling all of the draconian stringed instriuments operating as the rule by law?
The new ministry of truth will go like this according to Presidenti Macron: “We will quote from the Pentagon and most leaks from the US intelligence services along with, of course, the BBC. And I would like to set the record straight on my alleged gayness, I am just a little bit gay, but not as gay as those rag papers state and may I add, most of my friends are gay which demonstrates I have nothing against the gays.
France IS toast. Hollande brought down the economy by imposing 80 new taxes and endless totalitarian regulations, now Marcron buries the last attempts of free speech – after having fixed H’s emergency orders into permanent law. Talk to people in F. or look at the ensdless ruins of small factories and shops. F. IS toast.
In Sweden we already have an ‘actually-site’ (could in Swedish also be interpreted as ‘Fact-ually’), that shall clarify if news are truth or false, paid by the government and run by the five most MSM newspapers and state television. After one month it has turned out to be a total disaster!
Creating a ministry of truth is like telling the whole word how completely and utterly insecure French authorities really are….
French authorities have absolutely no faith in their own narrative.
It also starts to give an implication of a timeline until there’s a death penalty for speaking ‘double plus untruth’.
The first Ministry of Truth was created in 1984 – Orwell.
The most amusing thing about all of this fake news and conspiracy theory fighting by the status quo (which, in my opinion, tells something) is that, whilst the jewish/jewish shills are erecting ‘truth’ organisations, they seem to be forgetting, or are hoping that huwhite Europe has forgot, that the very definition of the Soviet newspaper ‘Pravda’ was ‘Truth’. Obviously, the Soviet propaganda newspaper wasn’t the truth at all, even though it was named after the truth. Censorship this is, nothing more.
Only concrete, objective, factual information matters.
” Because State and Corporate power depend on a similar set of unchallenged, unquestionable distortions and delusions, incoherance remains vital for their survival. After all, to present a coherent explanation as to why the Third World is starving, why the environment is falling apart, why there was a Cold War, why Panama was invaded, why there was a Gulf War, why 40 percent of British and French children live below the poverty line, and so on, would immediately involve revealing the truth that society is built on a set of necessary illusions. Consequently the news we see and read, like education at school, must consist of a stream of disconnected, disembodied facts, with no context, no coherent explanation of meaning or significance, no backround and no logical framework by means of which they could be understood. Because the only logical framework that fits is that the Western World is totally motivated by Corporate Profit so that at very nearly any Human and Environmental cost-is disallowed, a confused hodgepodge of ill-fitting, irrational frameworks must be invented and bolted together by Psychopaths. Any number of surveys have revealed the extent to which the majority of people have no coherent grasp of what is happening in the World. This does not indicate at all, as many claim, that the mass of people are stupid, only that they have been in effect Brainwashed.” Dave Edwards Author; Burning All Illusions
Manny, I hope you’re ready for all the worms that come crawling out of that can you’re opening.