Skopje, 2 November 2022 – Organized by the Aspen Institute, Germany, and the Association of Southeast Europe, this year’s “Civil Society & Think Tank” Forum was held on 1 and 2 November in Berlin. The Forum included a Panel dedicated to disinformation in the Western Balkans. As one of the panelists, Zoran Trajchevski, Director of the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services, pointed out, the countries of the Western Balkans, just as the rest of the world, had not remained immune to the upsurge of disinformation and fake news.
Dwelling on the upsurge of disinformation related to the coronavirus and the developments in Ukraine as a result of the Russian military invasion, he emphasized that the activities of the media regulatory bodies aimed at tackling these phenomena were of particular importance. The Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services, along with the Media Literacy Network, is actively working to raise the level of citizens’ media literacy for recognizing, exposing and dealing with disinformation and fake news, especially within the framework of the Media Literacy Days, which this year took place for the fourth time.
In the fight against the disinfodemic, there are also other regulatory aspects that are particularly important: the economic development and sustainability of the media industry, ownership transparency, as well as the efforts to raise the professional journalistic standards.
The purpose of holding this Forum is to present to the public the results and key recommendations from the think tank and civil society organizations and, at the same time, hold public discussion with the decision-makers from the Western Balkan countries and the EU countries before the Berlin Process Summit.
