Those media whose founders were convicted of spreading misinformation and hate speech cannot apply for funds from the Media Pluralism Fund, and starting next year, instead of the current million euros, those funds will be almost three million euros, announced Neđeljko Rudović, from the Ministry of Culture and media.
He said this at the conference "Are young people living their age of (dis)information", organized by the DAMAR Institute with the support of the NATO alliance.
The DAMAR Institute announced that the conference assessed that the fight against misinformation, hate speech and online violence is one of the key tasks of the entire society, and the primary step in that fight should be the reform of the education system.
Rudović believes that the formation of the Network for the fight against hate speech and disinformation is crucial in the fight against disinformation.
Until then, according to him, the state uses what it has.
"Those media whose founders were convicted of spreading misinformation and hate speech cannot apply for funds from the Fund for Media Pluralism, and from next year, instead of the current million euros, those funds will be almost three million euros. It is also foreseen that in unregistered media, portals, state bodies and majority state-owned companies cannot advertise. Also, media that are not self-regulated, that avoid following the guidelines from the Code of Ethics of journalists, they will also not be able to apply. for the Fund for Media Pluralism," said Rudović.
Jelena Zvizdojević from the Damar Institute said that we are witnessing that young people in Montenegro are exposed to skillfully placed media content that captures their attention, affects their emotions and to a considerable extent creates the beliefs, values and opinions of this population.
He adds that this was confirmed by their recently completed experiment, which showed that young people in Montenegro doubt their ability to recognize misinformation.
"Nevertheless, young people in Montenegro are relatively successful in differentiating misinformation from true content, with misinformation related to health aspects and previous distrust in the system having a strong foothold among that part of the population. The mentioned research showed that young people - from 19 until the age of 24, they probably do not read the information in its entirety, but also that they have a high degree of previously formed beliefs that are based on misinformation," said Zvizdojević
The executive director of the Eurothink organization from North Macedonia, Dimitar Nikolovski, points out that the hot topic in North Macedonia is their relationship with Bulgaria, and that they are not the target of Russian disinformation, as is the case with Montenegro.
He explains that "Russian disinformation campaigns are exploiting topical issues that are problematic in order to further deepen polarization in society."
The program director of the Center for Democratic Transition, Milica Kovačević, said that since 2018, this organization has been dealing with disinformation on a daily basis through the "Debunking" portal.
Nevertheless, Kovačević warns that with young people, additional work must be done on developing doubt and critical thinking.
"Creators of disinformation have established a serious infrastructure in this region, in which large funds have been invested, and which enable the lie you come up with, within a few minutes or seconds, to be transmitted to dozens or hundreds of small media," explains Kovačević.
Milena Kalezić from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs believes that the fight against disinformation is not and cannot be the job of just one body, but a synchronized action of the Government, the media and the civil sector.
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