“Plusinfo” today published an article titled Where are you, Kurir? which said that four portals that are critical of the government, in January were placed among the top 20 on the list of most visited online media, according to a survey of “Gemius”. Branko Geroski, project manager of project “Plusinfo” claims data for attendance of the portal, which were published by “Kurir”, are presented without permission.
The text reads:
Although research of “Gemius” is often contested by various parties, it is interesting to say that the statistics for this month have seen a drastic change in the list. Among the top 20, are missing pro-government portals Kurir, Republika, Netpress, Telegraf, Vecher…The “honor” is defended by Press 24 and Sitel.
Portal “Kurir” immediately replied to this text with a text titled: How are you Gero, greetings from Google Analytics in which it published photographers with data from the service for the attendance on websites “Google Analytics”. The photographs include data for the attendance of “Plusinfo”, which can only be accessed by the user of the login account of this service.
According to Geroski, any site that has a profile on “Google Analytics”, opens it with a user name and password.
– We occasionally supply statements of our analytics to advertising agencies, at their request. I guess some of them acted unethically and submitted the data to “Kurir”. However, we are absolutely satisfied with the attendance of our portal, because we do not “improve” it with scripts, party attendance, by spamming groups on Facebook and other similar ways. “Plusinfo” is popular, serious and influential site, unmatched by propaganda newspaper “Kurir”. The ranking of “Gemius” clearly showed high scores of portals that are critical of the government and that’s why “Kurir” is angry. And it will continue to be angry, because people do not want to read the propaganda and lies, they want to read the truth – stated Geroski for META news agency.
We requested an answer to the question of where have they obtained data for the attendance of “Plusinfo” from Chief Editor of “Kurir” Ivana Cvetanovska, who said that she is busy, and would answer us in two minutes.
However, after several hours, we still did not receive a reply, and Cvetanovska didn’t answer her phone.
