At the press conference in Skopje, besides building bridges and the benefits of the two countries becoming closer, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras spoke about the issue with fake news in regards to the Prespa Agreement.
According to Tsipras, “in the past months of implementing the agreement, the issue of fake news has become noticeable. ”
“In the past months, while we were very constructive in building relationships, we dealt with the issue of fake news. In Greece, suddenly, it was being said that the Prespa Agreement would create problems. However, those problems were being created for 30 years and the agreement actually resolves them”, said Tsipras.
The very fact that Tsipras spoke on that topic in Skopje, points to the seriousness of this phenomenon – in both countries.
In fact, just days earlier, on March 29 in Athens, a Greek-Macedonian conference was held, called “Fake News on the Prespa Agreement” which was attended by Macedonian journalists and representatives of civil society. Minister of Information Society and Administration, Damjan Mancevski said that as much as 10 percent of all articles in Macedonian and Albanian regarding the Agreement “were intended to present inaccurate information as facts”.
He underlined that in the period from 1 April 2018 to 15 March 2019, a total of 35,261 articles in the Macedonian language and 13,995 in Albanian were published. Analysis show that on average, 10% of these articles were aimed at not informing the public, namely, they were aiming to present inaccurate information as facts.
