Ekaterina Zaharieva Calls for Concerted Efforts in Fight against Fake News and Disinformation
14 June 2019 News
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ekaterina Zaharieva called on the entire public to pool their efforts against disinformation and fake news. She was addressing the Sixth News Agencies World Congress, organised by the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“Both politicians and the entire public must focus on identifying fake news and disinformation and countering their spread. Only together can we overcome the mistrust in society to which they give rise,” the Deputy Prime Minister said.
The Foreign Minister stressed that Bulgaria and its partners in the European Union have already taken measures by the establishment of a special unit for combating disinformation and fake news that generate negative phenomena like populism, hate speech, intolerance and extreme nationalism. “The catchphrase that the easiest way to kill a fly and a politician is by a newspaper was coined precisely here, in the Balkans, almost a century ago. At present this is even easier, but also more widespread: it takes just several mouse clicks and a post on the Internet,” Zaharieva told the delegates to the Congress which this year is mottoed “The Future of News”.
“At a time of globalisation and cutting-edge technologies, mainstream journalism bears a special responsibility for guaranteeing the truthfulness of information,” Minister Zaharieva stressed.
She highlighted the erosion of trust in the media on a global scale. According to the latest Digital News Report of the Reuters Institute, across all countries, the average level of trust in the news in general is down 2 percentage points to 42 per cent from the previous year. According to the same research, the proportion of people in Bulgaria that trust most news most of the time stands at 40 per cent, and this indicator has dropped by 14 percentage points to 24 per cent in France and by 13 percentage points to 47 per cent in Germany over the last four years. “The time has probably come to ponder and challenge the adage of CNN founder Ted Turner that ‘bad news is the best news’,” Ekaterina Zaharieva said.
She wished the journalists to stand up with honour for their authority as the ‘fourth power’ and congratulated BTA on the wonderful organisation of the Congress.
One hundred and twenty-one years ago, BTA was established as a service for the “delivery of cables on developments abroad” within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Public Worship”. The agency’s first subscribers were precisely the government institutions and the foreign diplomatic missions.
The Sixth News Agencies World Congress is the largest international media event in Bulgaria, attended by media leaders from more than 100 countries on all five continents, including Clive Marshall, CEO of the Press Association Group and President of the News Agencies World Council (NAWC), Peter Kropsch, CEO of the German News Agency dpa and President of the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA), Rasmus Nielsen, Director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, and US author and journalist Eric Weiner.
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