Whose truth is it anyway?

Anthony Delano in France

A side-effect of Covid-19 gave French media a rare chance to score against the government.

Although lockdown was largely accepted, restrictions on movement and the prospect of people’s whereabouts and contacts being monitored aroused disquiet. France was the birthplace of individual rights, of the revolution that freed ordinary people from oppressive and arbitrary rule. Were fundamental liberties now under threat? Was a government entitled to prevent its citizens going where they wished, record where they did go and whom they met? The highest court was to be asked if constitutional limits might be breached.

A fine polemical story, even if it seemed a bit rich to many. For all that they delight in proclaiming their individuality and flouting minor restrictions, the French are essentially conformist, resigned to accepting civic strictures as the price of a fairly protective state.

Nor did the constitutional challenge seem well-founded. A lot has happened since the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789. Even the European Convention on Human Rights, of which France is an ardent supporter, allows that the freedoms it defends “may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary…for the protection of health or morals”.

Nevertheless, privacy is a national preoccupation and, implicitly, freedom of movement – or at least the freedom to go anywhere not specifically forbidden. The media, in general, are respectful of authority. Reporting rules are strict and journalists are wary of intruding, even when dealing less with the right to be free than to be furtive: the right to an extracurricular rendezvous or an off-the-books business opportunity.

The government, however, gave the story a helpful diversionary push. Sibeth Ndiaye, the flamboyant West African who is Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s spokeswoman, announced a new measure in the anti-virus campaign: Désinfox, an official website on which news items would be classed true or false. Ms Ndiaye, a protégée of President Macron, has stirred things up before, but this went…well, viral.

From the left, Liberation pointed out the most obvious danger. “Even by labelling one story true, the implication would be that others were not.” On the right, Le Figaro wheeled out professor of communication Arnaud Benedetti. Unable to exert outright censorship, he wrote, the government had set itself up as a certifier of information. “It goes without saying that it is not up to the State to do this work. The biggest lies in history have often been spread by states…. When the state claims to tell us the truth, it is only telling its truth.”

Five days after Désinfox went up, it came down. Ms Ndiaye admitted on Europe 1 that it had all been “a mistake”.

The government had also hoped that the national enthusiasm for mobile communications and social networking would induce people to install contact tracing apps on their phones. Moving faster than Britain, it bought the app used in Singapore, TraceTogether. The very name aroused suspicion, even from a government adviser. “This epidemic cannot weaken our democracy, nor impinge on liberties,” said Gilles Babinet, vice-president of the French Digital Council.

Relabelled StopCovid, the app was reprogrammed to ensure that the movements of owner and contacts would be untraceable and unreportable. But with those and other functions disabled, the junior minister in charge of digital affairs, Cedric O, who is half Korean, admitted that it would probably not be much use. “It has to do with French history,” he said. “And a sensitivity to freedom that is inherent to French culture.” Compared with Asians, the French were “by nature, cautious toward technology and even progress”.

Mr Babinet would have none of that. “We gave up an absolutely fundamental freedom, that of movement, while most of the Asian countries chose instead to be much more coercive towards individuals.”