Book Review: Digital Fever, Taming the Big Business of Disinformation, by Bernhard Poerksen

Abstract

compensation for breaches of data protection, and on the impact and future of the RTBF (pp. 459-471). Lambert’s “Conclusion: Impact and Future” chapter might be viewed as a case of “imagine the past and remember the future” because the RTBF is still a work in progress. The Right to be Forgotten is an extraordinary book, since it’s an excellent resource for its scholarly and non-scholarly readers on the right to be forgotten in EU law. The author’s authoritative analysis of the RTBF creates enduring value. The book covers every real or imagined RTBF issue or topic pre– and post–Google Spain. It might justifiably be called a bible of the RTBF law. For journalism and mass communication educators and students, The Right to be Forgotten deserves a good read more as a supplemental text for advanced communication law class. Especially for those interested in the comparative approach freedom of expression vs. informational privacy as a global issue, the book should be the primary read. The RTBF is not recognized as such in American law. Nonetheless, as argued by Tulane law professor Amy Gajda in the “Right to Be Forgotten (Privacy in the Past)” chapter of her highly acclaimed 2022 book Seek and Hide (pp. 240-250). American journalists should not dismiss the RTBF as irrelevant. As a matter of professional journalism, the RTBF is being more widely accepted in American newsrooms directly influenced by the EU law—although not necessarily in exactly the way as it is recognized and enforced in Europe. Given that Google Spain and the RTBF are a global phenomenon, The Right to Be Forgotten is a necessary addition to the reading lists of not just JMC educators and practitioners. No matter how you may view the issue of censorship with regard to the RTBF, this much is clear: love the RTBF or hate it, you must understand it, and Lambert’s work is the direct route to that destination for JMC teachers and students.