Rapid response is going to be the French government’s answer to fake news in the media, reports FRANCE 24.
The French minister of culture Françoise Nyssen said that a judicial procedure would be established to stop the dissemination of fake news, as she introduced the anti-fake news law.
“The measures that we will be working on from now until March are to create a law about ‘confidence in information’ that will permit us to act very quickly when a fake news story goes viral, particularly during an election period,” said Nyssen in an interview with Journal du Dimanche on February 4.
“This new law will establish new responsibilities for the different media platforms, which will have to cooperate with the state and be transparent about their sponsored content. A judicial procedure will be put in place to allow rapid blocking of the dissemination of fake news once it has become manifest.”
French President Emmanuel Macron first proposed a law to counter fake news in his 2018 New Year’s speech to the press. This was seen as a veiled reference to Moscow-backed RT and Sputnik.
RT and Sputnik both have French-language websites and, during a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in May, Macron accused them of publishing "defamatory untruths" and "deceitful propaganda".
Since then, RT - formerly known as Russia Today - has launched a French-language TV channel, putting regulators on their guard.
Macron saw thousands of internal documents leaked online while running for president, which he blasted as an attempt at "democratic destabilisation like that already seen in the United States during the last presidential campaign".