Instead of carrying out the investigation without conflicts of interest and in a distanced way, in the service of public affairs, many of these actors have recycled themselves in what Lowenthal calls the “fight against disinformation”.

A pattern that is well known to readers of France-Soir with the report of the Twitter Files, the episodes of which have been published in our columns since December 2022. These internal documents of the blue bird were unveiled by Elon Musk. They have enabled investigative journalists to uncover several major scandals. These show the extent to which both free information and freedom of expression are threatened, due to the growing influence of political power: it is indeed on the pretext of this fight against disinformation that the latter exercises censorship.

This mechanism is not only at work across the Atlantic. Changes in the European regulation of digital platforms (the Digital Services Act) raise the same fundamental questions: to what extent can politics interfere with the sphere of information? Ultimately, can we then speak of a sort of “industrial mechanism of censorship” with a view to controlling the latter?

A new episode of the Twitter Files produced by Lowenthal himself addresses this subject and will soon be mentioned by France-Soir.

In the meantime, here is an exceptional text by the essayist which reports on his aforementioned observations and which exposes a new form of manipulation of information. This is essentially based on this mix of genres as surprising as it is serious between actors who should never collaborate together because of obvious questions of ethics: academics, members of NGOs, journalists with politicians, industrialists and soldiers.

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