In the context of the manipulation techniques used by the media in the current election campaign, the project Sic! follows a case relevant to what specialists call ‘media laundry’ by which a lampoon dedicated to the candidate for President of the Party “Action and Solidarity” (PAS) Maia Sandu is transformed into a news article with pretentions to credibility, IPN reports.
Thus, the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article saying German Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s support for the PAS candidate Maia Sandu was the result of an exchange. This consisted in Maia Sandu’s consent to accept 30,000 Syrian refugees from the European Union into Moldova. The lampoons website guralumii.net is the primary source of the article. Information about the ‘understanding between Maia Sandu and Angela Merkel’ appeared there first”, says the sic! article.
“The journalist does not make effort to find out the candidate’s opinion. Moreover, the article contains evidently false assertions by which it is explained why Maia Sandu accepted the agreement, reducing everything to a false conclusion: “Maia Sandu does not think about the people. She is concerned only about her political future and if this requires accepting 30,000 refugees, she will do so,” reads the article on sic!
The text in the newspaper is accompanied by the photo of a protest described as ‘protest against the Islamization of Germany”, where four persons carry a poster showing two women in burqa cut with a red line. The picture is captioned “This is what Maia Sandu promised to the German Chancellor”.
The article was published on the website of the paper Komsomolskaya Pravda and was disseminated by several portals and news integrators with reference to kp.md.
Maia Sandu denied the information. She said this is a lie that derived from a lampoon, but is spread by the TV channels of the Socialists and Democrats.
According to the authors of the sic! article, such denigrating information evidently suits Maia Sandu’s main opponent in the presidential elections Igor Dodon. “The scarecrow with the refugees, fueled intensely by the Russian propaganda during the last few years, can have a powerful effect on the people exposed in the news articles on the Russian TV channels. Without understanding that the news item is an invention, the people will be demotivated to vote for Maia Sandu,” says the article.
Also, the authors consider such news articles can influence the geopolitical sympathies of the readers, cultivating Euro-skepticism.
The lampoons website guralumii.net is the primary source of the article on kp.md, mentioned as ‘some of the media sources’. The information about the ‘understanding between Maia Sandu and Angela Merkel’ appeared here first. Launched on September 7, 2016, guralumii.net contains no information about the authors of the information placed there and about who manages it, said the sic! authors.
