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Fighting for facts in the era of Trump and Musk

Jérôme Fenoglio, www.lemonde.fr

posted on in: In the News.
~413 words, about a 3 min read.

Le Monde's director has a really excellent piece out. They've written about why the publication will no longer be on Twitter/X. Fenoglio writes well and persuasively about how we got here, and what is to come.

Overnight, the reactionary sphere has gone from being overly anxious about "woke culture," which was set to engulf the West, to an unabashed infatuation with free speech, as promoted in a radicalized version by Musk. The history of free speech in the US shows, however, that this notion is far more fluid and controversial than the conception defended by the boss of X would have us believe.

But this caricature makes it easy to launch into fiery pleas for unrestricted freedom, pretending not to understand that this amounts to advocating a return to the violence of the savage state, or at least to consenting to the law of the strongest, i.e. the richest.

It is also about the importance of journalism, journalists and facts and the conflict that will arise from the basic work of them fulfilling their purpose. Even more of import is his note that this is not just about the work of journalists, but the professions responsible for building the facts that underpin our basic understanding of the world and how they will also come under attack.

The stakes are quite different. Far beyond freedom of opinion, it is once again the facts that are under attack, as well as the methods used to place them at the heart of public debate. Without these facts, no discussion is possible, no opinion is founded. The social purpose of journalists is to establish them, thanks to their professional know-how: investigative techniques, verification and cross-checking of obtained information, the precision of sources, the search for contradictory views and the separation of fact from comment.

By enlightening citizens in this way, they contribute all the more to the functioning of democracy if they know how to recognize any mistakes they may make as quickly as possible. We make sure of this at Le Monde, because no one can claim to be infallible.

In some ways, these methods are similar to those used by scientists, or to the work of uncovering the truth during legal proceedings. Yet it is no coincidence that these three professional categories are the ones that have the most been exposed to Trump's wrath in recent years, and to the future repercussions from those who make up his cabinet.



— Via Jérôme Fenoglio, Fighting for facts in the era of Trump and Musk
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