“On January 3, during his first press event of the new year, French President Emmanuel Macron presented a proposal intended to ‘protect the democratic life’ of France from ‘fake news,’” writes Marcin Rzegocki in this week’s Acton Commentary. Macron would make it “possible for judges to remove fake news stories, delete the links to them, block the sites, or close the offending users’ accounts.”
The French president is not alone with his ideas to limit foreign information in his country. On Monday, the EU assembled a 29-person panel to investigate the problem of “fake news” and present a plan for a coordinated response to the European Commission by April. On Tuesday, the British Parliament held a hearing on “fake news.” Some nations have already taken action.
But in this context, an “important question arises … Who will decide what is truth?”
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(Photo credit: Raul Mee, EU2017EE. This photo has been cropped. CC BY 2.0.)
