French Press Agency AFP And Google Team Up To Fight Disinformation Ahead Of French Elections

Euro­pean media is report­ing that Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Google France have launched a pro­gram to fight dis­in­for­ma­tion in the run-up to the French pres­i­den­tial elec­tions next year. Accord­ing to a Eurac­tiv report:

Decem­ber 6, 2021 The pro­gramme enti­tled “Objec­tif Dés­in­fox” aims to bet­ter equip jour­nal­ists against the risk of dis­in­for­ma­tion that could pol­lute the next pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the first round of which will take place in April.  Media that are mem­bers of this new alliance will be offered the­mat­ic train­ing cours­es from mid-Jan­u­ary. The cours­es will focus on dig­i­tal inves­ti­ga­tion tools, like fact-check­ing and mon­i­tor­ing.  “I call on news­rooms to take an inter­est in this pro­gramme, the train­ing aspect of which will enable their jour­nal­ists to become more agile behind their screens and to devote the time thus regained to the field,” AFP CEO Fab­rice Fries said in a state­ment.  A col­lab­o­ra­tive plat­form will also be cre­at­ed to allow jour­nal­ists to exchange, report false or mis­lead­ing con­tent and share fact-checked con­tent between par­tic­i­pat­ing news­rooms.  This is sim­i­lar to what Meta, for­mer­ly known as Face­book, does with its 80 fact-check­er media part­ners, includ­ing Le Monde‘s Les Décodeurs, AFP, 20 Min­utes and France24 in France.

Read the rest here.

We report­ed last month that France had cre­at­ed an office to counter for­eign media manip­u­la­tion called Vig­iNum, which began oper­at­ing in Octo­ber and has an annu­al bud­get of 12 mil­lion Euros.

In Octo­ber, we report­ed on sev­er­al ini­tia­tives by the  Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment to counter for­eign influ­ence oper­a­tions and disinformation.