A French court has ruled that the France-Soir website cannot be considered a digital media outlet, as it constitutes a “danger to public health” due to the hoaxes and conspiracy theories it shared during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although the site will be allowed to continue to exist, it will no longer have certain tax advantages or financial support typical of the press. France-Soir says it will appeal the decision.
The legal mess began in December 2022, when the Joint Commission for Publications and Press Agencies (CPPAP) refused to renew France-Soir as an “online press service”. The agency, which is part of the French Ministry of Culture, justified the site as posing a risk to citizens by publishing information that “undermines the protection of public health”. The website published content related to conspiracy theories, as well as hoaxes that questioned the recommendations of health authorities and the effectiveness of vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic.
France-Soir, the successor website to the now defunct newspaper of the same name founded in the 1940s, appealed against that decision and the case has been in court ever since. In January 2023, the company that owns the site, Shopper Union France, won the appeal to maintain its status as a media outlet with the rights that come with it: tax advantages and aid granted by the Strategic Fund for the Development of the Press (FSDP).
In March, the Council of State urged the CPPAP to comment again on the renewal, but it refused again in July, considering that the site does not have the “general interest character” to be a digital media outlet.
The latest to rule was the Paris Administrative Court, which decided last week not to suspend this ruling. Based on a report from the Ministry of Health, the judges determined that the site could constitute “a danger to public health.”
“Politicized censorship”
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The website condemned the court’s decision on Tuesday: “This politicised censorship decision aims, above all, to kill France-Soir, to put an end to a media outlet that has carried a critical voice, trusting in readers above all else,” it said in a post on its website. The company accuses the Ministry of Health of “criticising articles based on scientific publications without having previously written to the editor, as is usual in science, in order to maintain the debate.”
For the site, it is “incredibly disproportionate” to lose its media status for “0.6%” of the articles it publishes and that this will have an economic impact on the company. In this regard, France-Soir has pointed out that it is in danger of going bankrupt and that, as a result, it has had to make layoffs and not renew contracts.
Despite this new legal defeat, the company has announced that it will appeal the decision before the French Council of State, which performs functions similar to the Spanish Supreme Court. “The truth is in motion, nothing will stop it,” he added.
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