Europe's Free Press Has a Problem: Who Gets to Decide What Is Disinformation?

Europe spends a great deal of time lecturing the rest of the world about press freedom, freedom of expression and the importance of maintaining an open information environment. Yet something increasingly uncomfortable is happening inside Europe itself: governments and supranational institutions are becoming increasingly willing to restrict, sanction, financially isolate or exclude people and organisations whose political narratives they regard as hostile.

The latest example is Xenia Fedorova, a Russian journalist and former senior executive of RT France who was placed under European Union sanctions on 24 September 2026. The EU says she participated in foreign information manipulation and interference and disseminated narratives aligned with those promoted by the Russian authorities concerning the war in Ukraine, European support for Ukraine, NATO and relations between Russia and the EU. The consequences are not merely rhetorical. The sanctions include an asset freeze and a prohibition on EU individuals and entities making funds available to her.

There is a legitimate argument for governments to confront foreign state propaganda. Russia has used state-controlled media as instruments of its foreign policy, and the European Union has explicitly accused Kremlin-backed outlets of systematic information manipulation. In March 2022, the EU suspended the broadcasting activities of RT and Sputnik across the bloc, arguing that these outlets were being used to conduct disinformation and information manipulation in support of Russia's war against Ukraine. The EU now lists 27 Kremlin-backed media outlets whose broadcasting activities and licences have been suspended.

But there is a fundamental question that Europe should not be allowed to avoid: when does fighting disinformation become controlling information?

The distinction matters because "disinformation" has increasingly become a powerful political label. Once somebody is classified as a Russian agent, Kremlin propagandist or foreign information manipulator, the public is often encouraged to treat everything that person says as inherently illegitimate. But that is not how truth works. A journalist can have relationships with Russian institutions and still make a factual observation. A person can sympathise with Moscow and still ask a legitimate question about European policy. Someone can repeat a Russian talking point and still occasionally be correct.

The appropriate response to a false claim should therefore be to demonstrate that it is false. Show the evidence. Publish the documents. Present the competing facts. Explain the context. Let journalists challenge the argument. Let citizens examine the evidence and reach their own conclusions. Simply attaching a government-approved label to the person making the argument does not, by itself, establish that every statement they make is false.

This is where the European approach becomes uncomfortable. The EU's position is that the restrictions are directed at hostile information operations rather than legitimate journalism. That distinction is important, and governments are entitled to make it. But the more frequently governments use sanctions, broadcasting restrictions and financial measures against individual media figures, the more important it becomes that the evidence and legal reasoning behind those measures remain open to scrutiny. Otherwise, "disinformation" risks becoming a category defined by political authority rather than demonstrated falsity.

The contrast with Russian media makes the question even more complicated. European authorities have largely shut Russian state-backed media out of the European information space, while Western media organisations continue to operate and report on Russia from outside or within the wider Russian information environment to the extent Russian law permits. Moscow has its own restrictions on Western media, of course, and Russia has severely constrained independent journalism. None of that makes European restrictions immune from scrutiny. The existence of censorship somewhere else does not automatically make censorship at home compatible with liberal democratic principles.

This is also why the recent case of Fedorova deserves more attention than simply calling her a propagandist. Before the EU sanctioned her, she had continued appearing on French media outlets including CNews, Europe 1 and Le Journal du Dimanche after RT France's broadcasting activities were suspended. European officials and lawmakers had already accused her of promoting narratives aligned with the Kremlin. On 24 September, the EU formalised that position through sanctions.

The question is not whether Fedorova is pro-Russian. By all available accounts, she has expressed positions that are sympathetic to Russian narratives, and her previous senior role at RT France is a matter of public record. The more important question is whether citizens are better served by being told that somebody is a Kremlin propagandist or by being shown, claim by claim, where that person's arguments are wrong.

That distinction becomes particularly important when European politicians repeatedly warn that their populations are being overwhelmed by Russian disinformation. If a politician says that British society is drowning in Russian disinformation, a journalist should be able to ask a remarkably simple question: What, specifically, do British citizens currently believe that is demonstrably Russian disinformation?

1. Name the claim.
2. Show the evidence.
3. Explain where the Russian state originated it, how it was amplified, and why it is false.
4. That is journalism.
5. Simply repeating "Russian disinformation" does not answer the question.

And this is not an argument that Russian propaganda does not exist. It plainly does. Nor is it an argument that governments should sit passively while foreign states conduct covert influence operations. They should not. The problem is what happens when the machinery designed to defend democracy becomes increasingly comfortable deciding which information citizens are allowed to receive.

There is a historical reason Europeans should be particularly careful about this. Freedom of expression was not invented to protect opinions that governments already considered respectable. It exists precisely because governments are often tempted to decide that some opinions are too dangerous, too offensive, too destabilising or too politically inconvenient to be heard.

The principle becomes especially important during wartime because war produces an enormous temptation to simplify information. One side becomes the defender of civilisation and the other becomes the source of every lie. Every inconvenient argument can then be attributed to enemy propaganda. Once that mentality takes hold, citizens are no longer being treated as adults capable of evaluating competing claims. They are being treated as a population that must be protected from particular ideas.

That is not a small philosophical difference. It is the difference between a society that believes its citizens can distinguish truth from falsehood and a society in which governments increasingly believe they must distinguish it for them.

There is another uncomfortable development here. Sanctions are not the same thing as an editorial disagreement. When a government freezes someone's assets, restricts their ability to receive money and prevents businesses from dealing with them, it is using coercive state power. That may sometimes be justified by genuine security considerations. But precisely because the consequences are so serious, the evidentiary threshold should be correspondingly high.

Europe cannot simultaneously tell the world that information freedom is a cornerstone of democracy while steadily expanding the circumstances under which political information can be excluded through administrative and sanctions mechanisms without a corresponding public examination of the underlying claims.

The answer is not to allow foreign governments to manipulate European societies without resistance. The answer is to build a stronger information environment in which propaganda can be challenged without making censorship the primary weapon against it.

1. If Russia says something false, prove it false.
2. If an Israeli government says something false, prove it false.
3. If an American government says something false, prove it false.
4. If the European Commission says something false, prove it false.
5. If a journalist says something false, prove it false.

That is the uncomfortable discipline of a genuinely free press.

The moment the state begins saying, "This person is dangerous, therefore you should not listen to them," citizens should start asking a second question: What exactly did they say, and where is the evidence that it is false? Because a democracy that trusts its citizens should not be afraid of competing arguments. It should be confident enough to defeat bad arguments with better ones.