Journalism

"More or less, it is going well, but the problem is that there is that certain number of people you will never reach because they are simply grounded in their own beliefs for a long time, they reject argumented dialogue," Vidov told BIRN in an interview.

So-called 'anti-vaxxers' perceive the debunking of fake news "as a threat to their agenda," he said.

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Pandemic Boosts Support for Europe's Autocrats

Hungary Censoring Information on COVID-19, Report Says

"These could be the last days of independent media in Hungary," Agnes Urban, a media expert at Corvinus University in Budapest, told BIRN.

The New York Times picked up the most awards as the 2020 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced virtually on May 4 owing to the coronavirus outbreak.    

Prize board administrator Dana Canedy declared the winners from her living room via a livestream on YouTube rather than at a ceremony at New York's Columbia University.    

The freedom of press is the guarantee of any functional democracy wherein citizens must be properly and timely informed, reads a message by the Foreign Affairs Ministry (MAE) on the World Press Freedom Day, sent on Sunday to AGERPRES.

Plesoianu on April 25 invoked article 54 of the decree issued on 16 March by President Iohannis declaring a state of emergency, which has been used to block access to a dozen websites since then. 

Today, it is more important than ever for journalists to be able to work freely and accurately to combat misinformation and to provide citizens with access to vital information. This was stated by a European Commission spokesman at a press conference in response to a question related to Reporters Without Borders' annual media freedom ranking.

Albanian journalists and cameramen reporting about COVID-19 Pandemics in Tirana, on 30 March 2020. Photo: LSA

Print media outlets in Moldova face likely collapse if the current coronavirus pandemic continues, the Independent Press Association, API, which gathers most big print publications in Moldova, has warned.

The report, Fighting Words: Journalism Under Assault in Central and Eastern Europe, issued on Wednesday by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the University of Oxford evaluates the situation of the media in the region by drawing on interviews with about a hundred journalists in 16 countries during 2019.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) launched a cross-border journalism platform on Thursday with the aim of helping journalists all over the globe by providing them with knowledge and assistance necessary in today's world.