“Several years ago I met Xhabir Deralla, CIVIL Media online, and we quickly imagined that lot of problems here in North Macedonia, as propaganda, building democracy, are important also for the Eastern Partnership countries, and so Xhabir Deralla took part as a lot of online statements during the Media Dialogue project. And so that was the base that we got to found with the Government of North Westphalia to make a project here and I think it’s really great that Media Dialogue Goes Balkan”, said Dr. Wolfgang Ressmann, Head of the international project Media Dialogue for Civil Media, on the occasion of the international seminar “Resilient journalism in countering disinformation and propaganda“, organized By CIVIL in partnership with (Y4M).
“The main challenges are, as a slogan – “Don’t feed the flames, tell the truth”, meaning fight against propaganda, inform the audience about whatever truth is, but double check different points of view and to connect this work with the education of students and professional journalists. And education at the universities, and artists too, because artists also are very important for transporting content and points of view. This network is international, from Ukraine starting, then Belarus joined as the Belarus Journalist organization now in exile, then Georgia, Armenia and also Moldova in 2021. Now we are in Macedonia, and I think this combination is great to share our experiences and to show that in every country, in Germany also, like in Macedonia, people are fighting for democracy and being supported by young people, being supported by journalist organizations, that we are really working networked”, says Dr. Wolfgang Ressmann while talking about the Media Dialogue project.
Dr. Ressmann reflected also on the Russian propaganda in Germany, talking about its visible presence, as well as about the political presence of the right-wing populism and extremism related to the Russian propaganda.
“So, we have influence of Russian propaganda together with these conspiracy theories, together with anti-corona protestors. Now we have this big police investigation against the so-called Reichsburger that says Germany is not existent as a legal state. So, Russian propaganda is also present in Germany, connected to this right-wing scene and in the corona times, during their protests they went to the Russian Embassy and said Putin help. That was unbelievable. Now the war against Ukraine made this right-wing scene a little more careful, with their connections to Russia, but that still exists and we have problems”, says Dr. Ressmann.
Ressmann stressed that there is a problem also with Russian hackers who are attacking the parliament, the infrastructure… there is a hidden war in Germany by Russian extremists.
“I think we should use, let’s say, the other side. And the other side means fighting for democracy, fighting for democratic values, fighting and supporting telling the truth, what’s going on in the societies, informing our audience and informing our audience about our values, about how democracy is working, fighting against corruption, fighting for a social secure system”, concludes Dr. Ressmann, adding that the democracy needs self-confidence, not to remain blind, but be self-critical.
Biljana Jordanovska
Camera and editing: Samuel Debus/OK-TV Ludwigshafen
Translation: N. Cvetkovska
The interview is part of the project “Resilient journalism in countering disinformation and propaganda”, which CIVIL is implementing in partnership with Youth4Media (Y4M), with the support of the Government of North Rhine-Westphalia, Dusseldorf, Germany.
