Zoran Zaev, the Prime Minister of North Macedonia informed today that among the 10 priorities of the Government’s “Action 21 – Implementing European Standards at Home,” that the Government of North Macedonia will be working on the next year is the fight against disinformation and preventing the damages caused by the false news.
As part of the priority objective “Stop Disinformation,” Zaev announced more activities in the forthcoming period, including wider consultations with media workers and the civic sector and more intense fight against disinformation spread, hate speech and other forms of hybrid threats against the democracy in our society. All of this is part of the Plan for decisive action against the spread of disinformation and the attacks on democracy.
“These efforts will be revealed as disinformation in cooperation with fact-checkers and the media will be provided with the most transparent access to all relevant sources and information in order to create objective media content of public interest. The government is obliged to protect the public interest and in that sense, we shall do everything in our power to completely, timely, and correctly inform the citizens about the ways to protect themselves from COVID-19, including the vaccination process,” said Prime Minister Zaev.
He stressed the tendencies connected with the news related to the anti-COVID-19 vaccine that have the objective to cause mistrust among the citizens and to devalue the doctors’ and institutions’ efforts in the fight against the pandemic.
When it comes to cyber attacks defense, the prime minister stressed again that the procedure for adjustment of Memorandum for cooperation between the Macedonian Defense Ministry and NATO was succesfuly done, and the document is ready to be signed. This will allow a coordinated reaction on part of the allies in case cyber attacks occur.
“North Macedonia will be a leader in finding solutions in the fight against disinformation that are attacking the whole wide world and I believe, shoulder to shoulder with the partners from the West and NATO, that we shall fight back against this malice accordingly,” said Prime Minister Zaev.
In his speech, Zaev announced that media literacy will become a part of this country’s education programs, with the goal to help younger generations to be more resilient to false news.
