Students from Slavonic University Are Aware of the Manipulation by Means of Press

Another group of young people has been involved in discussions organized by the Centre for Independent Journalism. This time, CIJ experts met on Thursday, November 19 with the students from Slavonic University from Chisinau. Petra Raschkewitz, a Deutsche Welle representative started the lesson with some welcoming remarks. She talked about the importance of media education, especially for the Republic of Moldova, because this field has not been addressed, yet.
Ion Terguta, taking into account the specificity of media market in the Republic of Moldova, characterized the relationship between media and its consumers as full of paradoxes and emphasized that it was very important for us to know who stays behind these media institutions, to prevent from being manipulated by their media products.
The students admitted that they were aware of manipulation practiced by the press, but did not know how to protect themselves against this phenomenon. Ion Terguta, in turn, asked them what kind of sources of information they used and in their opinion how reliable these sources were. How  we read the news, how much information we assimilate without being influenced by details deliberately added by the source fully depends on us, the consumers”, the expert noted. In this context, the young people analyzed some journalistic texts to detect manipulation procedures. The manipulation provoked heated arguments by means of movies and historic materials. The participants disputed some topics, based on examples provided by the international cinematography. At the end, they came to the joint conclusion that more vigilance was needed and more attention should be given to any information provided by the press, to never get manipulated. We wanted to listen to the opinion of other students about this lesson. Maria Dunighevscaia argues why it is so important to read more sources and only after their strong analysis make conclusions about what in fact happens around us. Her colleague, Maria Harea thinks that young people must be vigilant when watching TV broadcastings to avoid falling in the trap of some professional manipulators. “I always realize that not all the information media provides is true, and today I found out how to filter it”, told us Maria Harea.

Media lessons are carried out within the project “Freedom of expression and media development in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and South Caucasus", implemented by CIJ during the period May-September 2015, supported by Deutsche Welle Akademie and financed by German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development”.