France is to create a state agency to detect fake news over fears that next year’s presidential election could be hit by a “pandemic” of disinformation, reports The Times.
The National Agency for the Fight Against Manipulations of Information will be launched in September in an effort to prevent foreign powers such as Russia and China from using covert means to influence French voters.
President Macron’s supporters accused Moscow of trying to help Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, in the 2017 election, and believe it will attempt a repeat next year. Le Pen has regularly defended President Putin and was invited to hold talks with him in the Kremlin four years ago.
French officials insisted that the agency would be an impartial observer of cyberspace whose job would be to unearth bots and trolls seeking to shape the political debate in France.
“It’s not a question of correcting or re-establishing the truth but of managing to detect attacks when they come from abroad,” Stéphane Bouillon, the government’s general secretary for defence and national security, said.