Macron Wants To Ban 'Fake News' During Elections

[Louie]

Oh boy. The problem with "fake news" is that the term is highly political: What's fake news for a left-wing liberal is not so for a very conservative person - and vice versa!

When Huffington Post takes a study that claims 45% of domestic violence victims are men and distorts that by saying "but women never start, they only defend themselves! Thus, 90% of victims are women!"... is that fake news?

When a right-wing organisation publishes a map that shows "terrorism by immigrants" and adds stuff that wouldn't be considered terrorism (or stuff that's basically any crime simply involving an immigrant, not just those *commited* by immigrants)... is that fake news?

When news organisation publishes a video of Trump and Shinzo Abe feeding fish and says Trump committed a Faux Pas by pouring his whole box of fish food into the pond - while conveniently editing / cutting out the part where Abe does the some things *before* Trump... is that fake news?

When a far-right politician makes outrageous tweets that get censored and then claims Twitter is left-wing biased because they allow pro-communism posts.... is that fake news?

Even science is political because the scientists are: Let a left-wing and a right-wing institute conduct two separate studies about the same topic and they'll probably come to very different conclusions - which one is fake news? Which one is "real news"? And even more importantly: Why don't we let people form their own opinions? What about freedom of speech and freedom of thought - no matter which side gets the short end of the stick? If the creationist movement suddenly gains popularity in France, will the teachings of evolution be considered Fake News?

There are just too many ways to abuse such a law and when it comes to political topics, there is no such simple thing as an objective truth. I can't think of a rightwing biased example right now, but "Data Journalism" is a good example here: Nate Silver (from fivethirtyeight.com) always was proud of himself because he was an "objective" data journalist - but when Trump was the frontrunner in the republican primaries Silver totally ignored all the data and distorted it and said "Trump will never be the presidential candidate". I'm still a huge fan of that website but that was just a disaster waiting to happen and everyone could see it by looking at the data sets. So... was that fake news? That Nate Silver deserve to be censored or go to prison because his political views got the better of him? I think absolutely not.