Online Media Needs More Self-Regulation – not Interference: BIRN Panel

State regulation of the media should be limited, with self-regulation strengthened and prioritized, journalists and media experts from the region told the third and final online public debate on online media regulation held by BIRN on Wednesday.

Panelists representing different prominent media in the region as well as legal experts focused on potential solutions for self-regulation and regulation of online media, considering the growing pressures that media in the region face, such as speed, clicks and disinformation.

The panelists agreed that the government should not have mechanisms to interfere in the media content but should provide regulations to ensure a better environment for journalists to work in.

Authorities should also strengthen the rule of law in terms of copyright and censorship of hate speech, pornography, and ethical violations, they said.

Flutura Kusari, legal advisor at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, said Kosovo has a good self-regulatory non-governmental body, the Press Council, which consists of around 30 local media representatives, all holding one another accountable.

However, self-regulation is limited due to the lack of rule of law all over the region, Kusari explained.

Geri Emiri, editor at the Albanian media outlet Amfora, explained that most of the media in Albania have self-regulatory mechanisms whereby anyone can complain of abuses.

“It is not enough if the will to self-regulate, after a complaint by a citizen, does not exist,” Emiri said, explaining the difficulties media in Albania face from the government trying to create legal methods that he said lead to “censorship”.

Emiri was referring to legislation proposed by Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama as an “anti-defamation package”, which aimed to create an administrative body with powers to order media to take down news reports that “infringe the dignity of individuals”, under the threat of heavy fines. Critics said the law could have a chilling effect on media freedom due to its broad terms.

Goran Mihajlovski, editor-in-chief at the Macedonian media outlet Sakam da kazam, agreed that government bodies would not be right for media regulation “due to changes in government and [because] the body would politically be appointed and would open doors to more political influence and pressure on the media”.

Jelena Vasic, project manager at KRIK, Serbia, said professional media can assist in regulating the media enviroment in the region and in curbing fake news by “debunking” and fact-checking news that is already published.

Vasic said he was aware that debunked fake news often does not reach all of the audience that the fake news has already reached, but added that, “even if half of the people who read the fake news are now faced with the facts, a good change has been made”.

Alen Altoka, head of digital media at Oslobodjenje, Bosnia, said one of the main problems behind the increase in fake news in the region is profit-based media organisdations, suggesting that Google should not allow ads for fake news portals as one solution.

BIRN engages in fact checking and debunking fake news, as well as other digital rights violations in the region via its Investigation Resource Desk platform, BIRD, monitoring tool.

BIRN held its first online public debate within the Media for All project, funded by the UK government, in September 2020, followed by another debate on the topic in late December.

Turkish Court Overrules Erdogan’s Power Grab Over Anadolu Agency

In a surprise setback to the authoritarian President, the Turkish Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday that the Presidency’s move to take direct control over the Anadolu Agency is against the constitution.

The news agency is constitutionally an autonomous institution with a budget supplied by the state. But after the country introduced an executive presidential system in 2018, concentrating power in the head of state, it was put under the direct control of the Communications Directorate of Turkish Presidency by presidential decree.

“The control of Anadolu Agency by a directorate under the Turkish Presidency does not accord with Anadolu Agency’s autonomy and may harm the objectivity of its publications,” the court said in a statement.

The statement added that such direct control undermined the institutional independence of the agency’s organisation and human resources.

Opposition parties and media experts accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of turning Anadolu Agency into a government mouthpiece.

The Constitutional Court made its decision following the submission of a complaint by the main opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP. Only two judges voted against, while the other 13 members voted to scrap the presidential takeover.

Anadolu Agency was established by Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in 1920, mainly to tell the world about the Turkish War of Independence that followed the end of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1925, the agency was made a private company with a view to making it a modern and independent media outlet, but with funding secured by the state.

A century on, it is now a global news agency with publications in 13 different languages, including Arabic, English, French and Russian.

The new agency has also become an important instrument in Turkey’s application of “soft power” foreign policy activism in the Balkans. It operates in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Albanian and Macedonian with regional offices in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Skopje, North Macedonia.

Abuse of Journalists Rarely Punished by Serbian Courts: Report

A report analysing court cases for crimes against journalists, published on Tuesday by the Belgrade-based Slavko Curuvija Foundation and Centre for Judicial Research, says that on average, only one in ten criminal complaints about threats to or attacks on journalists results in a court verdict.

The report, entitled ‘Protection of Freedom of Speech in the Judicial System of Serbia’, analysed 20 court cases dating from 2017 and 2020 that involved the alleged crimes of endangering someone’s security, general endangerment, persecution, violent behaviour and inciting ethnic, racial and religious hatred and intolerance.

“Most reports of acts against journalists don’t go any further than the prosecutor’s office. Only every tenth reported case ends with a final court decision,” the report says.

The report claims that when deciding not to press charges, “it seems that the prosecution did not consider the specifics of these cases carefully and attentively enough”.

It also says that in cases where there have been convictions, courts imposed suspended sentences in eight of them and a year of home detention in one case, while the only custodial sentence imposed was six months in jail.

The report also analyses 305 misdemeanour cases from 2017 and 2019 in which journalists, editors, publishers and media outlets were sued.

It says that most cases drag on for too long, meaning that a final judgment is often made too long after the initial incident for it to provide adequate legal satisfaction for the defendants or plaintiffs in terms of protecting their rights.

“In by far the largest number of cases, the process lasts longer than a year,” the report says.

It partly blames delays in sending out copies of verdicts, which in turn delays appeals.

The report also says that some media publish articles without properly checking the facts and the source of the information.

“Compensation is often awarded for using the image of the wrong person to illustrate an article,” it says.

Romania Violated Journalist’s Freedom of Expression, Says European Court

The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday condemned Romania for failing to uphold freedom of expression in the case of a local journalist who was fined by a domestic court over a series of critical articles about another journalist in the north-eastern county of Bacau.

“The case concerned the domestic authorities’ decision to order the applicant, a journalist, to pay damages for having published five blog posts criticising L.B., another journalist who was the editor-in chief of a newspaper in the Desteptarea media group and producer for a local television channel belonging to the same group,” the ECHR said in a statement.

The posts were published by Gheorghe-Florin Popescu in 2011. The same year, L.B. brought civil proceedings before a court in Bacau, which ruled that two of the articles posted by Popescu lacked any factual basis when describing L.B. as morally responsible for a murder-suicide.

The Bacau court also established that Popescu had used vulgar and defamatory expressions that affected L.B.’s honour and reputation, and ordered him to compensate L.B. with the equivalent of 1,100 euros.

Popescu subsequently appealed against the verdict, but Romania’s Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal as unfounded in 2013. The journalist then took his case to the ECHR.

More than seven years later, judges at the ECHR unanimously reached the conclusion that Romania breached Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which protects freedom of expression.

According to Tuesday’s verdict, Romanian courts failed to make “a distinction between statements of facts and value judgments” when examining Popescu’s criticism of L.B.

The verdict also said that Romanian courts ignored “the fact that the applicant was a journalist and that the freedom of the press fulfilled a fundamental function in a democratic society”.

They also ignored the fact that L.B. was a publicly known figure before the controversy involving Popescu, the verdict added.

The Romanian courts ruled that some of the content of Popescu’s articles was offensive, but the ECHR concluded that “although the satirical nature of the articles had been the main argument in the applicant’s defence, the domestic courts had failed to investigate with sufficient care whether or not this was a form of exaggeration or distortion of reality, naturally aimed to provoke”.

“In the court’s view, the style was part of the form of expression and was protected as such under Article 10, in the same way as the content of the statements,” the ECHR said.

Online Media in Balkans ‘Need Regulation, Not Censorship’

Experts told an online debate hosted by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network on Tuesday that the current regulation systems for online media in the Western Balkans are not good enough, but efforts to curb the publication of hate speech and defamatory comments must not tip over into censorship.

Media and legal experts from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia who spoke at the debate entitled ‘Case Law and Online Media Regulation in the Balkans’ also said that the application of existing legislation is inadequate.

Authorities often rely on legislation that was developed for traditional media which has not been adapted accordingly, or on self-regulation which is not mandatory.

Lazar Sandev, an attorney at law from North Macedonia argued that “those who create public opinion regarding matters of public interest do not uphold any standards, they do not have any legal knowledge”.

Jelena Kleut, associate professor at the University of Novi Sad’s Faculty of Philosophy, said that in Serbia there is lack of willingness to apply standards in online media, and noted a difference between rich and poor media outlets as well as responsible and not responsible ones.

“The wealthy, irresponsible media – they have legal knowledge but they don’t care. They would rather see the complaints in court, pay a certain amount of fines and continue along, they don’t care. On the other end of the spectrum, we have responsible but poor media,” Kleut said.

The media experts also debated the controversial issue of reader comment sections on websites, which some sites around the world have removed in recent years because of a proliferation of hate speech, defamation and insulting language.

According to Montenegro’s Media Law, which came in force in August this year, the founder of an online publication is obliged to remove a comment “that is obviously illegal content” without delay, and no later than 60 minutes from learning or receiving a report that a comment is illegal.

Milan Radovic, programme director of the Civil Alliance NGO and a member of the Montenegrin Public Broadcaster’s governing council, argued that this “it is clear that in such a short period of time, if it is applied, will damage those affected, but also damages for freedom of expression”.

Edina Harbinja, a senior lecturer at Britain’s Aston University, warned that there is a conflict between regulatory attempts and media freedom, and that “this is when we need to be careful in how we regulate, not to result in censorship”.

This was the second debate in a series of discussions on online media regulation with various stakeholders, organised as a part of the regional Media for All project, which aim to support independent media outlets in the Western Balkans to become more audience-oriented and financially sustainable.

The project is funded by the UK government and delivered by a consortium led by the British Council in partnership with BIRN, the Thomson Foundation and the International NGO Training and Research Centre, INTRAC.

Montenegrin Govt Urged to Commit to Press Freedom Reforms

A group of media organisations has called on the new Montenegrin government to commit to reforms that will build and maintain media freedom.

Media Freedom Rapid Response, MFRR, the Southeast Europe Media Organization, SEEMO, and their partners published a report on Wednesday, demnanding protection of media freedom in Montenegro.

“It will take sustained and concerted efforts by Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic to improve protections for media freedom and the rule of law. They must devote particular attention to addressing the myriad problems faced by journalists and media workers in Montenegro,” said iNik Williams, coordinator at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, ECPMF, in a press release.

In parliamentary elections held on August 30, three opposition blocs won a slender majority of 41 of the 81 seats in parliament, ousting the long-ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS. After the election, on December 4, new Prime Minister Krivokapic, among other things, promised his government would restore and protect media freedom.

In the report, MFRR called for an end to impunity for crimes against journalists and media workers by ensuring police and prosecutors investigate all attacks and threats and bring perpetrators to justice.

It also called for establishing shared standards and principles for the regulation of the media market to encourage a fair playing field.

The report warned about the current ownership concentration of much of the media, saying management of state support funds and public advertising had been paired with a ruthless campaign against independent media.

The media organisations pointed to the prison sentence issued to the well-known investigative journalist Jovo Martinovic, calling it an attack on journalism. In a second-instance verdict, the court found him guilty of mediation in drug trafficking; he insisted he only met criminals for the purpose of his investigation.

“The new government should continue reform of the public broadcaster. It should start reforming journalistic source protection and, generally, ensure that all new or amended media laws are drafted in line with international standards and best practice on media freedom and pluralism,” the report said.

In its 2020 progress report on the candidate country, the European Commission noted a lack of media freedom in Montenegro, stressing that important old cases of attacks on journalists remained unresolved. The Commission warned also of the polarization of the media scene and of weak self-regulatory mechanisms.

“Concerns also remain about national public broadcaster RTCG’s editorial independence and professional standards,” the progress report said.

Slovenia Govt Condemned for Cutting Funds to Public News Agency

The Slovene Journalists’ Association, DNS, said on Tuesday it was “appalled” by the government decision to stop funding the Slovenian Press Agency, STA, the independent public news agency, allegedly because it did not file the requested documentation to the Government Communications Office, UKOM.

“This is yet another attempt to destroy the national press agency, which is a pillar of high-quality and unbiased reporting. We have seen the same thing happen in neighbouring Hungary,” the DNS said in a press release.

As local media – but not the government press release – reported on Tuesday, the UKOM informed the government of Janez Jansa that it was unable to implement a contract with the STA for the rest of this year or conclude a contact for next year.

The STA as a result has not received any monthly compensation for October from UKOM, which its leadership says threatens its future, and is a serious threat to media pluralism and media freedom.

BIRN asked UKOM to respond to these accusations but did not receive a reply by the time of publication.

However, UKOM director Uros Urbanija told public television on Tuesday that there had been “no decision to stop funding the STA”, and that UKOM had only informed the government about the impossibility of financing the agency because it “did not get the information we need to be able to verify the credibility and sustainability of [STA’s] funding”.

The pensioners’ party, DeSUS, a partner in the coalition government led by Prime Minister Jansa, on Twitter on Tuesday “demand the immediate withdrawal of the decision, by which, without prior and reasoned discussion, the government is strongly interfering in the media space”.

The DNS claims that, as the founder of the agency, the Republic of Slovenia is required by law to finance the agency.

The STA said on Tuesday that the UKOM decision was preceded by a series of letters addressed to the director and Supervisory Board since mid-October, and was responding to it “in a manner and within the scope envisaged by the legislation”, but that some questions submitted by the UKOM have no legal basis.

“In the letters, UKOM demanded a series of explanations: from content-related questions about the journalistic work of the STA editorial board and specific news content and responses to that content which run against the editorial autonomy provided by law; to issues related to business operations, which are, in accordance with the ZSTAgen [Slovenian Press Agency Act], supervised by the Supervisory Board of the STA,” the agency said.

Some observers suggest that Jansa’s right-wing government is dissatisfied with the STA’s reporting during the pandemic, as it gave more space to anti-government protests than to government and prime ministerial appearances.

But the DNS defended its work. With its news wire, live streamed press conferences and radio news service, “the STA has made it significantly easier for journalists to access information at a time when they have had to work remotely, due to various restrictions”, the DNS said.

A number of local and international press freedom watchdog organizations have accused Jansa of using the pandemic to restrict media freedoms and make often personal attacks on journalists.

Podcasts Bring Welcome Change to Bulgaria’s Stale Media Scene

Not long ago, tuning into a Bulgarian podcast was rare. In just a few years, however, the situation has changed hugely both in terms of choice and listeners’ habits. Productions in different genres increasingly appear out of nowhere, and the podcast format is on the verge of obtaining serious momentum. 

Although investigations are still few are far between, the trend has the potential to challenge and diversify Bulgaria’s media landscape, which is clearly problematic; the country was ranked in lowly 111th place in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, and the overt ties between media outlets, oligarchs and politicians have long drawn unrest and protest. 

However, the Bulgarian podcast scene is still in its “punk” phrase, with all its charm and imperfections.

Some of the major local productions are “Govori Internet” (The Internet Speaks), by Elenko Elenkov and Vladimir Petkov-Kaladan, now in its fourth season, which casts an eye on various modern life topics and has a focus on technology; Ratio”, which delves into science, psychology, politics and tech progress; “Victoria, by Peter Georgiev, devoted to nerdy bits of football history; The Urban Detective, which brings to life little known historical details about Sofia and other major towns; “The Superhuman, where every episode tells an inspiring story about physical strength, sports, health, and “Falshimento”, which presents new, often under-the-radar music. The bubbling stand-up comedy scene in Sofia meanwhile fuels Comedy Club’s podcast. 

Some of the productions that started this year address subjects that are rarely touched upon in great detail in the everyday news cycle and often meet ignorant remarks from the political elite: “Oh Yes”, for example, brings in one four female anchors from various backgrounds and on different locations to discuss feminism, gender issues, sex culture and education; “Girls We Are”, by Bilyana Slaveykova, also focuses on women’s experiences, and this November sees the start of PoliFemme by Katerina Vasileva, which is about women in politics: the debut episode retells the life of the current Belarusian opposition icon Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. 

Others explore niche but still important subjects: Stefan Rusinov, a translator from Chinese, just started “Belejka pod linia” (Underline) which is entirely focused on the aspects and challenges of literature translation. 

The increasing presence of foreigners living and working in the country in the last decade is also reflected: American Eric D Halsey is documenting local history over the centuries with his popular podcast “The Bulgarian History”, which has now been running for over 120 episodes. 

Searching for a depth that’s mssing elsewhere

The Bulgarian branch of the Association of European Journalists recently hosted its first ever “podcast festival”: between November 18 and 22 local and international anchors and journalists discussed the different layers of audio journalism and compared experiences in a Zoom conference, “Power Up: The Power of Podcasting”, which offered public talks and paid workshops. 

“The Bulgarian podcast scene is still very young,” Zornitsa Stoilova from Bulgaria’s major weekly newspaper, Capital, said during one of the talks, which is adapting some of its political and business analyses for audio on “The Voice of Capital”. “I hope for more human-centered stories since we’re missing that in our media landscape.”

“The long-form audio is an alternative to clickbait practices. Basically, we’re trying to search for a depth that’s missing elsewhere,” said Elenko Elenkov of “Govori Internet” during one of the panels.

Narrative journalism is also making its way – every episode of “Victoria” delves into different facets of local sport, from the little known history of Bulgaria’s women football to how early 20th  century immigrants from Bulgaria created one of the most famous clubs in Uruguay. 

“The Urban Detective” is exploring little-researched topics, legends and myths, mainly connected to Sofia: this includes whether The Beatles really almost played in Communist Bulgaria, how far the then regime went in creating an artificial sea near the landlocked capital, or how small-town Yambol was once a vibrant place for countercultural and visionary artists. 

“The Urban Detective” has been going for more than two years and is now rounding up its third season. One of its three members, Ana Blagova, says there has been an increasing diversity of content since 2018. 

“Also, bigger media outlets are embracing the format which works to make them more recognizable,” Blagova told BIRN. She finds telling stories through audio a more intimate and informal experience than regular journalism. She has substantial experience as a reporter, while her other two colleagues have separate shows on the national broadcaster, Bulgarian National Radio. 

Ana finds that audio also benefits the user in a different way, since it takes the listener away from the screen. 

“There’s room for a brand new audience, especially today when opening a news website and facing all the bad stories at once is downright overwhelming. I don’t think podcasts can become a full-bodied replacement of everyday journalism but they’re a wonderful companion, a way to enrich your awareness on why a certain topic is important to discuss. 

“It also holds a lot of potential in terms of delving into investigating journalism since in a written form you usually present the results; in audio form, the process becomes an ally in engaging the audience,” she observed.

Quantity doesn’t equal quality – yet 

Podcast producer Ilyan Ruzhin is cautious about the genre’s rise in the country, however. 

“There’s definitely an audience interest, I’d say it’s pretty much an explosion. And it might lead to an implosion soon. I think there’s already more content than what the audience can take, and that’s a result of a wider mediocre content,” he told BIRN. 

Ruzhin is behind the long-running music and Patreon-funded podcast “Falshimento”, and part of ProCasters team, a collective that works on recording and producing podcasts in Sofia. 

“What’s currently missing are more narrative podcasts; most of the local productions are people who just record their thoughts or make conversations and present them as interviews, without enough of a journalistic integrity. 

He adds: “There’s a reason for that void on the scene. Making a podcast is deceptively easy; you just need a mic and a laptop. People often underestimate that you need to use that mic properly, you have to learn how to edit and articulate your speech. So here’s the elephant in the room: what we’re widely lacking are producers, editors, people with proper journalism and storytelling skills involved with the format. All of these boxes should be checked before a production seeks funding.”

However, he is also optimistic that, at some point, quantity will bring quality. 

“The really decent Bulgarian podcasts are yet to be recorded. After all, good stories are something that we just naturally stumble upon in Sofia,” he concluded.

Turkish Government is Tightening Media Censorship, Report Says

A new report, “Media Monitoring Report”, published by the Journalists’ Association of Turkey on November 12, says censorship of the media has increased and that online media platforms are becoming more targeted.

The report said that 83 journalists are currently being held in prisons and that 245 journalists are being tried by the courts.

It said censorship has increased rapidly, especially of online media platforms, since parliament adopted a new law on digital rights in July last year, and added that pressures and penalties on the media had intensified in the last few months.

“Media content will be easily removed under the new law, which became effective from October 1,” the report said.

It added that “AKP and MHP representatives who they have the majority on the Supreme Board of Radio and Television, RTUK, use the existing regulations as an arbitrary punishment tool [on independent media].”

[The Justice and Development Party, AKP, and the MHP, the Nationalist Movement Party, form the ruling coalition in Turkey.]

According to the report, the RTUK, the state agency for monitoring, regulating and sanctioning radio and television broadcasts, issued 90 penalties on independent media, including stopping broadcasting and administrative fines, between July and September this year alone.

“Digital media platforms are starting to be reached [by the state] as much as the mainstream media. As a matter of fact, it was seen that a single journalist’s column is shared on social media platforms more than a mainstream newspaper’s total circulation in a three-month period,” the report wrote.

The report underlined that workers on online media institutions face many other difficulties.

“Internet journalists are classified in the office workers sector, not in the journalism sector. In other words, they are not recognised as journalists by the government,” the report noted, adding that because of this, journalists on online media are not entitled to official press cards.

“As a result, internet journalist cannot follow the news at state institutions or face the risk of arrest when they follow street protests,” it warned.

It also observed that many journalists face financial hardship as a result of the pandemic while the level of union membership among Turkish journalist is still very low, at only 7.88 per cent.

“Following the end of government’s ban on firing employees during the pandemic, it is presumed that the number of the unemployed journalists will increase,” the report said and added that many journalists are forced to take unpaid leave.

Fake News Rivals Real News for Albanians Reading about COVID-19

In late March, with Albania in full lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, an Italian pharmacist and self-proclaimed ‘doctor of nanopathology’ called Stefano Montanari gave an interview to a YouTube channel in which he likened the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 to the common flu.

The virus, said Montanari, “in most cases can be cured by the body so there is no need for the extreme measures imposed by governments across the world.”

Seventy-one year-old Montanari does not represent any scientific body. Nor is he a doctor. Newsguard, which rates website credibility, says his personal site has published “false and unsubstantiated claims” about health, including the coronavirus pandemic, while the YouTube channel he spoke to, Byoblu, has also been accused of peddling fake information.

Yet the March interview was an instant hit among Albanian-language media, his comments among the most widely distributed at the time, according to a BIRN analysis of article impact via social media, particularly Facebook.

But his were not the only debunked theories to go viral and which, coupled with the media’s own obsession with ‘clicks’ and the shortcomings of the government’s communications strategy, have fuelled the spread of conspiracy theories in Albania, experts say.

“People that believe that Covid-19 doesn’t exist or other conspiracy theories trust Montanari,” said Camilla Vagnozzi, editor-in-chief of Facta, an Italian fact-checking project established in March this year.

“Looking at the spread that his opinion had during the past months, I sadly say that the majority of people believed that he was saying something true and giving information that others want to give,” Vagnozzi told BIRN.

Montanari denial


Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Markus Winkler

Using UK-based BuzzSumo, an analytical search tool, BIRN identified news articles concerning COVID-19 that triggered the most social media engagement and published by the 20 biggest media outlets in Albania between January and October this year.

During the period monitored, Albanian media outlets distributed some 149,543 articles on COVID-19 on Facebook, triggering some 4.89 million engagements, including clicks, likes and other reactions.

The top 20 articles generated 93,711 reactions or shares. By comparison, the top 20 ‘fake’ or misleading articles, identified as such by fact-checking organisations or international institutions such as the European Union, generated 68,267 reactions or shares, so just 28 per cent fewer.

Yet a single news item published by the website GazetaKorrekte.com, and which references Montanari’s statements, alone elicited some 8,602 reactions.

Of the top 20 fake or misleading articles, five cited comments made by Montanari to Byoblu between March 14 and 17, eliciting a total of 27,365 reactions.

Neither Facebook nor Byoblu responded to requests for comment for this story. While Facebook has taken steps to identify false news through third-party fact-checking organisations, it is unclear whether such efforts include Albanian-language output.

Montanari, a pharmacist who runs a private diagnostics laboratory in Bologna, northern Italy, denied being the source of fake news.

“Can you identify any interest on me to distribute ‘fake news’?” he said in an emailed response in English to BIRN questions. Asked about YouTube’s removal of his statements to Byoblu, he replied, “They are obviously scared.”

People ‘don’t know what to believe’


Hospital workers transport face masks to the infection section at the main hospital in Tirana, Albania, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/Malton Dibra

Byoblu.com is a video-blogging site published by Claudio Messora, a former communications consultant for Italy’s anti-establishment 5Star Movement, currently part of the Italian government.

According to NewsGuard, Byoblu “repeatedly publishes false content, does not gather and present information responsibly, and does not avoid the use of deceptive headlines.” It cites the March 2020 interviews with Montanari in which he describes COVID-19 mortality as so low it is “probably even nonexistent” and says the concept of herd immunity is “a scam”.

There have been more than 38,800 COVID-related deaths in Italy since the coronavirus swept through northern Italy as its first foothold in Europe, including some 900 per day at the height of the spring outbreak. More than 1.2 million people have died worldwide.

Vagnozzi of Facta criticised the role of social networks in providing a platform not just for Montanari but for others in Italy such as Roberto Petrella. Petrella, a doctor, posted a video to Facebook in August in which he claims that COVID-19 is in fact manmade and part of a plot to reduce the world’s population. The video had been viewed more than 1.3 million times as of September 10, according to Facta.

“It doesn’t happen only with medical issues, is a phenomena that we already know also for other topics such as 5G technology or [US Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist] Bill Gates conspiracy theories,” said Vagnozzi.

“With Covid-19 pandemic the difference is that people are scared and panicked because they understand that we are living in a strange and out of our control situation and people often have no idea on what to believe.”

Social media giants like Facebook are trying to fight disinformation, she said, but some things are beyond their control.

“In my opinion, social media platforms are doing an honest work in fighting disinformation,”,” Vagnozzi said. “The spread of Montanari fake news is not only related to Facebook and Youtube efforts to fight disinformation, it is related with the ability of people to understand what can be true and what is false.”

Storm over Irish professor’s YouTube claims


Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/dole777

It’s not only Montanari’s views that have made a splash in Albanian-language media.

In an article published in April on the Albanian news portal Opinion.al, a man named Rashid Buttar, described as a graduate in biology and theology from Washington University and a practitioner of alternative medicine, claimed that the novel coronavirus was in fact created by US immunologist Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a combination of the HIV virus that causes Aids and the respiratory virus MERS.

The article had a total of 3,378 Facebook engagements, including 602 shares and 567 comments.

What the article failed to mention was the fact Buttar is a known conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccination campaigner.

Another article, published on May 11 by Standard.al cites statements made on YouTube by Professor Dolores Cahill of University College Dublin, leader of the right-wing eurosceptic Irish Freedom Party and who accused politicians and the media of using the pandemic as a “propaganda tool to try and take away rights from people and to make them more sick and to force vaccinations on us.”

The headline of the article reads: “British doctor makes surprising statement: In Italy are dying those who received flu vaccine. COVID-19 is not that dangerous.” The article had a total of 4,381 Facebook engagements, including 756 shares and 300 comments.

The fact-checking service Health Feedback classified Cahill’s statements as “based on inaccurate and misleading information”. Facebook and Youtube deleted the video as fake news.

After 133 medical students urged Cahill’s employer, University College Dublin, to take action, the university issued a statement in June saying the views she expressed “do not reflect the position of the school, college, institute or university.”

Trust in conspiracy theories


A protest in Tirana against compulsory COVID-19 vaccinations, June 2, 2020. Photo: Nensi Bogdani

Research suggests Albania represents fertile ground for conspiracy theories.

According to a survey published on October 10 by the Institute for Development Research and Alternatives, IDRA, 70 per cent of respondents said they believed COVID-19 was created in a laboratory in China.

Some 65 per cent expressed the belief that the virus had been created by people in power or by pharmaceutical companies for money and power.

A third of respondents said they believed in the theory that 5G mobile networks had a role in the rapid spread of the virus while 29 per cent said vaccines against it would be used to install microchips to track people.

Lamenting the influence of disinformation, Denisa Canameti, editor in chief of the Albanian newspaper Shëndet+, told BIRN:

“Due to this, we are in a position where a part of the population doesn’t believe that COVID exists and another part refuses healthcare offered by Albanian hospitals while others believe that the vaccine will be used to install chips. There are others who doesn’t believe statistical reports about the disease or do not trust WHO [World Health Organisation] policies.”

While most of the fake news published in Albanian media since the start of the pandemic has been translated from foreign sources, some have been homegrown.

One that made a commotion on Facebook concerned a claim made by a Tirana engineer called Sazan Guri that during the lockdown period a funeral company was providing its services for free, and even offering cash payments, to families who agreed to register the deaths of their loved ones as caused by COVID-19. An article published on the online portal of Fax TV on Guri’s claims alone received 2,300 engagements on Facebook, including 242 shares and 400 comments.

Contacted by BIRN, Guri stood by his statement.

“The whole COVID is fake news,” he said. “One or two per cent it exists, 98 per cent is faked by doctors and by the media reporting on it, forcing man to die from the fear of the fear.”

Klodiana Kapo, executive director of Albanian fact-checker Faktoje, state bodies in Albania share part of the blame for the poor quality of information reaching the public.

“What we have seen during this period is a total lack of transparency by the Ministry of Health and all these healthcare institutions, creating a situation in which news is only what is produced by the Ministry which in the meantime made it impossible to verify anything,” Kapo said.

“The pandemic has been accompanied by an increase in pressure by the Ministry of Health and the government to control even further the flow of information.”

Canameti of Shëndet+ agreed that health authorities had failed “to clearly articulate” information concerning the pandemic, but said media too remained hooked on social media impact.

“Even in this grave situation, we were not spared the mania of seeking attention and clicks,” she said.

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