This is part of the book “Stéphane Foucart et les néonicotinoïdes. The World and disinformation 1“ where I show the journalist misinforms (= false or misleading statements) the reader. Specifically, we show that his presentation of the ban on beet NNIs as obvious is misleading. All quotes are translated (by me), except the ones marked between [ ] in the french version (french quotes are to numerous to be marked in this one).


As we will see in the part on the objections management (chap.3), S. Foucart has a whole arsenal to deal with objections. He has repeatedly (with IUCN (17) and IPBES (19) (24) (25)) made comments that sound like warnings. He combined together these two logics of intimidation and dealing with objections to lobby against the reauthorization project. Thus, he takes up the words of François Veillerette:

“François Veillerette, director of the Générations futures association, denounces” an unacceptable setback which shows that this government easily bends under the weight of the agrochemical and industrial agriculture lobbies, and has given up being the leader of the fight against bee-killing insecticides in Europe”.” (63)

Besides the obvious disparagement, we see two important things here:

  • The neutralization of the voice of the many farmers who requested reauthorization by assimilating them to the producers of pesticides and to “lobbies”. (what we have seen in the 1.I.3.)
  • The door wide open left to a conspiratorial interpretation (“the weight of the lobbies”).

We find this allegation and this neutralization of the word of the farmers under the pen, directly, of the journalist:

“Promoted by agribusiness circles, taken up by the Minister of Agriculture, echoed by journalists and multiplied endlessly on social networks by thousands of little hands, a single element of language has swept away all of this. No one is unaware of it any more: “A bee, that will not go foraging in the fields of beetroot.”” (66)

He also repeats these words of MP Delphine Batho:

“This bill is based on a form of obscurantism,” judge Batho. It ignores the scientific data available and in particular ignores the phenomenon of the disappearance of insects that we are witnessing.” (65)

Those who promote this bill are therefore qualified as obscurantists… Note how the journalist “hides” behind political figures to make extreme remarks, thanks to the technique of “improprer citation” that we presented in the second chapter.