2016 was the year of full victory over the truth. Oxford decided that “post-truth” is the word of 2016. Post-truth is a generic named used by analysts and newspapermen for the epoch that we entered. False news, false calculations, demonstrated lies that were yet used insistently in political campaigns influence decisively the election outcome. According to the authors of an article on sic.md, this was evident in the U.S. presidential elections and in the referendum on the exit of the UK from the European Union. Moldova is not at all alien to this epoch.
According to the authors of the article, unlike the renaissance, industrialization or the Internet, the “post-truth” was implemented in Moldova without any delay. Sic.md chose seven most influenced lies in Moldova used this year.
One of them is the countdown to the return of the stolen US$1 billion promised by Prime Minister Pavel Filip immediately after the investiture. “The promise wasn’t babble as it was announced for several times, including in a live program on Moldova 1, in Chisinau and in an interview given to a Romanian TV channel,” says the article. Currently, on the Ministry of Finance’s website, there is only information about the recovery of the assets of the three liquidated banks and nothing about the confiscation or blocking of the accounts of those who stole.
Among lies, Sic! also mentions a news item about Moldova on the Russian TV channel Pervyi Canal (First Channel), with nine big lies, including the conscious production of ”false facts”. In this report, the member of the Party of Socialists and Parliament employee Iuri Viteanski appears as a farmer who does not have where to sell his apples.
Another discovered lie is the fact that the Mayor of Chisinau Dorin Chirtoaca informed the National Anticorruption Center about the wrongdoings committed in the alimentation of children in the municipal schools.
The authors of the Sic! also enumerated the statement made by Igor Dodon at the first election debate with Maia Sandu, when she said that 400 students committed suicide in 2012-2015 owing to Maia Sandu’s reforms in education. “In fact, 17 cases of suicide among persons aged between 17 and 18 were committed in the period, while specialists who combat this phenomenon say that these cases occurred amid a multitude of factors, not because of one cause,” says the article.
“The lie with probably the most serious impact in 2016 was the news about 30,000 Syrians. According to a website created in September 2016, these would have come to Moldova if Maia Sandu had become President. This is an evident lie promoted consciously by Igor Dodon’s team through the party paper, in electoral meetings, at TV debates and through false news items produced by controlled TV channels,” said the authors of the article.
The full article in Romanian can be read on sic.md. Sic! is a project by IPN news agency implemented with the assistance of Soros Foundation Moldova.
