Filip Stojanovski from Metamorphosis, at CIVIL’s panel discussion “Pandemic and infodemic” that was held on December 1, highlighted that the role of journalists is crucial in the fight against infodemic, as we have witnessed how cases of disinformation have caused unrest or tensions in our society, due to content released by centers of power. Such manipulative content in the most part does not go through a journalism filter to be checked whether it is relevant.
“We have media that once they publish a certain disinformation they do not publish a correction afterwards, and they should even be apologizing to the readers they have deceived. It is similar with people who spread fake news. Citizens learn from the media how to act, more specifically, if the media act unethically, then they create space in which unethical attitude becomes a norm”, says Stojanovski.
He adds that there was disinformation about Greece and Albania closing their borders only for some ethnic communities. Some of the media after having spread fake news and disinformation removed the content, that is, deleted the trace as some kind of criminal, but on Time.mk the trace remains that this news had been published.
“If these were other times, the media would have had a list of all those infected and would have published their names, but luckily, personal data of patients infected with Covid-19 was not published. There were calls for publishing information on which municipalities these patients came from, their ethnic affiliation, and this caused hate speech on the social networks towards a certain ethnic or religious community.
It’s as if religious leaders are competing on who will least comply to the recommendations during the religious holidays, and this in some way indirectly led to the spread of the disease”, stressed Stojanovski.
He stressed that fact-checking should not be a special genre, but an integral part of the journalism activity.
“According to a survey by Kritnik, 95 percent of the journalists who participated in the survey needed education on media literacy, since the situation with new technologies is always changing and we need to learn about them, to incorporate those skills in the primary, secondary and higher education, especially for journalists”, noted Stojanovski.
He also adds that fact-checking is just one branch of journalism, because it has been noticed that it is not the only solution, but that healing of the entire system is needed, all forms of journalism, and if they function how they are supposed to, then they will be a shield and a public service.
“Certainly we cannot cover all disinformation coming out every day, very few people work on that, there are very few funds for that”, emphasized Stojanovski.
D.M
camera: Atanas Petrovski
editing: Arian Mehmeti
translation: N. Cvetkovska
