{"id":29897,"date":"2018-01-19T08:01:49","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T13:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29897"},"modified":"2018-01-19T08:01:49","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T13:01:49","slug":"macron-is-using-the-fake-news-excuse-to-attack-press-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=29897","title":{"rendered":"Macron Is Using the “Fake News” Excuse to Attack Press Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Macron Is Using the “Fake News” Excuse to Attack Press Freedom<\/a><\/h3>\n
Only on the free market of ideas can information be checked and double-checked.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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In press statements for the beginning of this year, French president Emmanuel Macron announced his plans for cracking down on fake news. Haunted by the controversial Macron Leaks towards the end of the presidential campaign (which he won in May last year), the new French president was expected to go after the practice early in his term. The accuracy of the online information flow is important,\u00a0but Macron’s solutions are seriously worrying.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Macron’s Aim<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the press conference, Emmanuel Macron announced that restricting the presence of fake news online was essential to French democracy, andadded<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“As you know, propagating fake news on social media these days only demands a couple of tens of thousands of euros, and can be done while remaining completely anonymous.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While it is true that you\u00a0can<\/em> spend tens of thousands of euros, fake news can easily be spread with no money whatsoever. All it takes on social media is for a post to go viral,\u00a0in which case there is no need to sponsor the posts at all.<\/p>\n

In order to achieve better public information, Macron wants to make transparency about who operates and runs news websites compulsory (if it sponsors content on social media), and give judges the possibility to completely delete content. His proposed bill will only apply for election periods, during which he says that public opinion should be fuelled by facts, not false information. This restriction was due to the “#MacronLeaks” which happened shortly before the second round of France’s presidential election in May last year. Thousands of emails of Macron’s staffers had been leaked on 4Chan and led to wild accusations.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Macron Is Using the “Fake News” Excuse to Attack Press Freedom Only on the free market of ideas can information be checked and double-checked. In press statements for the beginning of this year, French president Emmanuel Macron announced his plans for cracking down on fake news. Haunted by the controversial Macron Leaks towards the end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[17053,2779,14991,333,2703,10457,18001,18002],"class_list":["post-29897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-bill-wirtz","tag-fake-news","tag-foundation-for-economic-education","tag-france","tag-free-speech","tag-freedom-of-press","tag-macron","tag-marine-le-pen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29898,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29897\/revisions\/29898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}