Deception

Abania Prime Minister Edi Rama speaking at his party headquarters on 30 June 2019. Photo: Gent Shkullaku/LSA

"We are now examining very carefully this new draft adopted by the Council of Ministers that will go to parliament in September," Soreca told Albanian Public Television.

Over the next three years, the British government will allocate £ 18m ($ 22.5m) to combat disinformation and the "fake news" phenomenon in Eastern European countries, as well as strengthening of independent media in Western Balkans, DW reported.

In the words of British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt, it is a priority to create conditions for the smooth work of the journalists. 

By all accounts, next Sunday's general election is crucial and decisive as regards the course and future of the country.

,,Thanks to the coordinated approach that we have built up at EU level, we have not witnessed a large-scale disinformation attack during the European elections.''This was stated in the studio of the BNT morning block, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Maria Gabriel.

TV channels in Albania have declared their latest election campaign pricelists, with a number of them offering spots for paid appearances on editorial programmes, despite the electoral code explicitly banning broadcasters from running election propaganda as news content.

A global survey shows that 86% of Internet users admit they have been fooled by fake news, the Sabah newspaper reported. The main platform for misleading information was the social network Facebook.

The Office of the Disciplinary Prosecutor, UDT, of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, HJPC, on Friday filed a disciplinary action against Milan Tegeltija, president of the HJPC, for "a serious violation of official duty, jeopardizing public trust in the impartiality and credibility of the judiciary".

Fake news, anonymous trolls, algorithms that foster echo chambers and promote hate speech: The digital challenges to contemporary public discourse are vast and well-documented. Such is the furor around them that a few analysts have gone as far as to claim that "the internet is drowning today's democracies."

The Ministry of Interior reports a decrease in phone frauds for the last three years. This was made clear in a statement by Interior Minister Mladen Marinov during parliamentary scrutiny.

As the term ends of the current politically tainted council of the public broadcasting service, a new chance has arisen to reform this propaganda tool of the former regime.