ES Vienna, 27 April 2021
Irina Nedeva, the AEJ’s special representative on fake news and disinformation spoke on the main private Bulgarian TV channel today about the distorting effect of social media on getting across solid information about the Covid pandemic.
The solution: good journalism, she said in an interview for the programme This Morning. The key problem? “The (Silicon Valley) business model of sharing sensational news”, however misleading. “Efforts to verify the facts are good, and it is good that some social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, have started to do so, “ she said in a programme devoted to the Covid pandemic.
“However, it is extremely important for people to know that the facts need to be verified. This is the place of journalism. The truly new business model of good journalism will be the one that checks facts “,
People could also get trapped in a cynical distrust of healthcare. “We can be very easily misled, we can use drugs that are harmful to us and disinformation can be nearly fatal. It is very important to be able to check facts.”
That was why the Association of European Journalists, of which she is Bulgaria’s national chairman, had produced a fact-finding guide https://aej.org/2021/04/19/de-
“There, everyone on our site can see how to check one or another information. It opens our eyes to the way we can be manipulated, ” explained the AEJ’s disinformation chief, who has led the Bulgarian fight against disinformation and training journalists (and others) in how to identify it.
Irina Nedeva is a senior editor at BNR (Bulgarian National Public Radio) and involved since its foundation with the Red House Centre for Culture and Debate https://en.redhouse-sofia.org/ since its foundation in 2000.