The Association of Independent Press (API) on March 31 launched the Discussions Club “STOP FALS!” that will center on cases of deliberate dissemination of false and distorted information through the mass media and other communication platforms, IPN reports.
According to the organizers, there will be discussed specific themes related to the protection of the information sphere of the Republic of Moldova. “It is a Club that will meet monthly to debate the most serious situations of manipulating and tendentious presentation of information in the national and foreign media,” said API director Petru Macovei. According to him, in time the discussions will be extended to involve representatives of state institutions that should deal with the protection of information.
At the beginning of the Club’s meeting, a conference was held over Skype with Alina Sugoneako, the representative of the website www.stopfake.org that is designed to fight misinformation in the mass media in the context of the crisis in Ukraine. “Initially, we thought that this will be a short-term project, but this developed from a webpage into an analytical center that studies propaganda and methods of fighting it,” stated Alina Sugoneako.
Among the subjects discussed by the Club was a program broadcast by the TV channel “Ren Moldova” on January 30, 2016. Member of the Broadcasting Coordination Council Mariana Onceanu said the Council examined this program and established that it was produced with multiple deviations from the normative standards and decided to penalize “Ren Moldova” by banning it from broadcasting advertisements during 72 hours.
Mariana Onceanu also said that there were identified not only manipulating techniques, but also deviations from the legislation. “For me, instigation to hatred on grounds of ethnicity, language and political believes is the most serious thing. I consider this thing can be emphasized within this monitoring report,” she stated.
The event is organized within the media campaign against false and tendentious information “STOP FALS!” that is carried out by the Association of Independent Press, the Independent Journalism Center and the Association of Independent Telejournalists of Moldova.
