The government has decided to remove from its website the "disinfox coronavirus" service, which listed "fact-checking" articles from certain media concerning the Covid-19, and which was strongly criticized by the editorial staff, announced Tuesday the Minister of Culture, Franck Riester.
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This initiative (emanating from the Government Information Service, GIS) "obviously did not represent an objective of sorting articles or information, provided I can understand the concerns that were raised by this service in the newsrooms", said the minister, adding that the executive had therefore "taken the decision to remove this page from the government site".
Indignation of many journalists
This new section of the government.fr site, which listed links to articles "from the French media fighting, in the context of the health crisis, against disinformation", was put online at the end of April. These media were Franceinfo, Liberation, 20 Minutes, Le Monde and Agence France-Presse . But in a text published on Sunday, around thirty journalists 'and writers' societies (including that of Europe 1) had denounced the operation in chorus, saying that "the State is not the arbiter of information "and that it" gives the impression, in a mixture of harmful genres, of labeling the production of certain media ".
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The National Union of Journalists (SNJ) had filed an appeal with the Council of State on Monday for the government to remove this page from its site.