Fake News Campaign Targeted French Frontrunner Macron
- EU body cites parallels with 2014 incident traced to Russia
- Fake newspaper site was used to spread campaign-funding story
New Poll Shows Macron Overtakes Le Pen in French Election
This article is for subscribers only.
French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron was hit recently by a fake-news hoax in which a bogus website resembling the site of Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported that Saudi Arabia was financing his campaign.
The report drew attention after Marion Marechal-Le Pen, a lawmaker with France’s right-wing National Front, posted it on her Twitter feed on March 2. It was retweeted by others including her aunt, Marine Le Pen, the party’s presidential candidate, and Francois Fillon, the conservative Republican candidate. Both candidates later removed the item from their Twitter feeds, as did Marion Marechal-Le Pen.