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Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Google France announced the creation of a new project to tackle disinformation called “Objectif Désinfox” on December 6th, 2021, following their experience on the the “CrossCheck” collaboration around the last elections in 2017. At a critical moment for democratic debate, AFP again decided to work with French media organisations to share its expertise as a global leader in digital investigations, and support fact-checking efforts from its media partners.

The coalition will be in place until June for all French media organisations wishing to join forces to fight disinformation, to pool fact checks to make them more visible and to respond to verification requests from the public. 

On February 8, 21 media organisations had started working with the coalition: 20 Minutes, AFP, Arte, BFMTV, Euronews, Fact & Furious, FactoScope, France24, Konbini, LCI, M6, Mediacités, Phosphore, Rue89 Bordeaux, Rue89 Strasbourg, RFI, Radio France Maghreb 2, RMC, RTL, TF1 and TV5 Monde.

The project is independently coordinated by AFP, with the support of Google France. It aims to tackle disinformation on several fronts:

• Granting all partners access to digital investigation training modules created by AFP.

• Making digital tools available for verifying online information (including Label Fact Check, Google Image Search, Trends, PinPoint, Invid-WeVerify, CNRS tool Politoscope, plus Visibrain’s tweet-recorder and other tools). INED (the French National Institute of Demography) will also join the coalition as an academic partner.

• Managing a platform where AFP fact-checkers will share their expertise and help their colleagues. AFP will also share its “#elections2022” fact-checking thread for free.

• Highlighting the verification work of all media partners via the creation of a dedicated page on the AFP Factcheck website, as well as several social media accounts to give maximum access to the verified information to the public.

• Matching fact checks to requests from the public via a platform for signaling misinformation. People will be able to question the coalition regarding remarks from candidates or social media posts.

Fabrice Fries – Chairman and CEO of Agence France-Presse: “It is AFP’s mission to share its experience as a leader in digital investigations, but the fight against misinformation is a responsibility for all newsrooms – that is why we are doing everything we can to make this coalition as large as possible.”

Sébastien Missoffe – Google France Managing Director: “Every year Google trains thousands of journalists in the use of digital tools, especially on useful technology for verifying online information. This partnership with AFP allows us to amplify this training ahead of the presidential and legislative elections. Our common goal is to help democratic debate thanks to quality information, which is the most efficient weapon against disinformation.”

Thierry Thuillier – Executive Vice President of News for TF1 Group: “The Covid crisis and the intensity of the presidential campaign, especially on social networks, show the necessity for all media to make a stand to fight disinformation as it threatens the foundations of our democracies. We are motivated by this initiative and this responsibility. The decision is in the same spirit as the “Vérificateurs” (“controllers”) programme we launched two years ago. As well as offering new content and regular programmes on our TF1 and LCI channels, and our TF1 info website, forty of our newsroom journalists have been trained on fact checking tools.” 

Please visit our website Objectif Désinfox! 

Press contact:  

Google : presse-fr@google.com

AFP : Boris Bachorz – boris.bachorz@afp.com

ABOUT GOOGLE

Google's mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Through products and platforms like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Chrome and YouTube, Google plays a meaningful role in the daily lives of billions of people and has become one of the most widely-known companies in the world. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.

ABOUT AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

AFP is a global news agency providing coverage of world news. Since 2017, AFP has built up the first global digital investigations network with more than 130 journalists, currently covering 85 countries. AFP fact-checkers are leaders in the fight against disinformation and publish their content in 24 languages on the AFP Factcheck website.