How a Single Mistranslation Seeded Dozens of Negative News Reports about the French and Brexit

This is a story of carelessness, laziness, and possibly also wilful ignorance in some quarters. It demonstrates how interdependent our media have become in their need to keep the news pipeline filled 24/7.

The Root of the Problem

Our tale began at 9:16pm on 29 October 2021, when Alex Wickham of Politico released on Twitter the French-language text of a letter from the French Prime Minister to Ursula Von Der Leyen.

In his original tweet (which also contained a scanned copy of the letter) Mr Wickham wrote:

NEW: Huge escalation of French fishing row tonight
Extraordinary letter from French PM Jean Castex to European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen obtained by POLITICO
France tells Brussels it must demonstrate that Britain has been damaged by leaving the EU

In the second tweet in the thread, published 3 minutes later, he included the comment:

France asks for EU support on fishing and says Britain must be damaged by Brexit

He also incorporated his translation of part of the original letter:

“It is indispensable to demonstrate to European public opinion that more damage is suffered by leaving the EU than by remaining”

Notice how the above translation (itself flawed, of which more later) doesn’t square with his comment claiming that…