API launched the portal www.stopfals.md

The Association of Independent Press (API) launched the portal www.stopfals.md – online platform of the Campaign against fake and tendentious information STOP FAKE!, implemented by API in partnership with Independent Journalism Center and Association of Independent TV Journalists from Moldova over the last two years. The website has the motto “Portal protecting against media fakes and manipulation”, and the goal set by API by launching this portal is to reduce the impact of media fakes and develop citizens’ capacities for critical analysis of information.

The portal www.stopfals.md is updated with articles uncovering fake and visibly tendentious information that distorts the reality, analyses and comments, other relevant materials on the „fake news” phenomenon in mass-media and other communication sources, such as socializing networks. The website has an attractive design and accessible structure, possesses modern multimedia elements and provides various interactive modules for communicating with the users. Thus, the readers can signal the information believed to be fake, and API team will check and communicate the result.

At the same time, the portal will present a top chart of fake information and statistical data on the number of false and distorted information published by various media institutions from Republic of Moldova and abroad, the database being constantly updated. At the same time, the platform www.stopfals.md will inform all readers about the modern factchecking tools, by means of which one can check the publicly-issued information and identify the fakes promoted in text, images, video. In the following months, API experts will recommence their meetings with media product consumers from various regions of Moldova, to discuss about information manipulation techniques and how to protect against their negative effect. The portal www.stopfals.md is completed in two languages, the

Romanian version being already available, and the Russian-language version will be activated in the first decade of January 2018.

The Association of Independent Press (API) reminds to media product consumers and journalists from the country and abroad that the website Stopfals.com, which appeared recently in the online space, is a clone-website that has no relationship with organisations developing the Campaign against false and tendentious information STOP FAKE!. This website unauthorisedly borrowed the campaign logotype and disclaimer in order to divert the campaign and assign another identity to it, trying thus to make fake news and distorted information, which they publish, seem reliable.

For additional information: (022) 220995 (contact person – Ion Mazur) E-mail: stopfals@stopfals.md Web: www.stopfals.md