Macedonia Ruling Party Smears Rivals Using Fake News Sites

With domestic media outlets coming under increased monitoring for the approaching general elections, Macedonia's ruling parties are resorting to new tactics for the campaign, including opening "news" sites registered in neighbouring countries that spread demonstrably false or completely unproven information.

Two such news sites, "saznajemo.rs" and "alo.com.hr", recently registered in neighbouring Serbia and Croatia, an investigation by NOVA TV news portal has shown.

Both sites were registered on November 15, just before the start of the campaign for the December 11 elections.

Both have also published identical and misleading news packages concerning Macedonia's main opposition party.

The NOVA TV probe uncovered that both sites were opened by the company New Media Enterprise, which is registered in Skopje and owned by Gjorgi Pop-Gjorgiev, a marketing employee of the pro-government news portal Plus 24.

But the news portal also displayed what it claims are property documents that show that the first owner of that company was Filip Petrovski, a member of the ruling VMRO DPMNE party and head of Macedonia's National Archive.

Petrovski reputedly plays an important role in managing the party's election campaign on social media as well.

The first news items that the two websites published claimed that the opposition Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev negotiated with Albanian groups in Switzerland to divide the country along ethnic lines in return for a whopping bribe of 10 million euros.

Darko Buldioski, an online media expert from Skopje, told NOVA TV that the scheme echoed the sites issuing fake news about US President-elect Donald Trump, which were hosted by people living in Macedonia.

However, he...