Country Bans War Symbols, Other Propaganda

Michael Hedges April 12, 2022 - Follow on Twitter

Aggressive and false information flows easily in the digital age. Whatever shocks gets attention, get repeated and, in the extreme, causes violent acts. Responsible news outlets are very aware that their words and pictures can be - will be - transformed into propaganda. Free speech absolutists call this the price of democracy.

Tiny Moldova is wedged between Ukraine and Romania, literally between a war zone and the European Union. The country is highly dependent on Russian gas. Since the onset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (February 24), more than 410,000 refugees from that conflict have entered Moldova, which has a population of about 4 million, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) data (April 11). Moldova has taken the most refugees from Ukraine per capita than any other country. By all accounts Moldovans have mounted a heroic effort to accommodate the refugees.

This disruption has provided opportunity for certain propagandists aiming messaging negative toward Ukraine, reported Wired (April 8) and Balkan Insight (April 12). Much of this arrives though videos on social media, a favorite of propagandists. Typically shown are staged depictions of refugees acting out badly. It is a “coordinated campaign” of “manipulated content about the war in Ukraine,” said WatchDog MD Community project manager Valeriu Pasha.

“It is something that aims to disorient the information consumer, so that he has no opinion, to say that everyone is bad, just like that,” said Mr. Pasha to Moldovan news portal Agora (April 8). “This is one of the strategic goals of those who do propaganda, not necessarily to have consumers on their side, but to have them disinterested, upset, respectively easy to manipulate in the future.” Moldovans have been targeted by Russian propaganda since the 2014 annexation of the Donbas regions of Ukraine.

The Moldovan Parliament passed (April 7) amendments to current law alerting broadcasters to “content qualified as misinformation or information affecting the security of the audiovisual information space,&rdquo reported Romanian media news portal G4Media (April 8). First offence leads to a €5,000 fine, second a license suspension. “Misinformation is no longer tolerated,” said Culture Commissioner Liliana Nicolaescu-Onofrei. One amendment prohibits broadcasting programs “originally produced in countries that have not ratified the European Convention on Transfrontier Television,” meaning no RT or Sputnik. An exception was given for audiovisual content produced in the US and Canada.

"It's not just about Sputnik,” added former Moldovan ambassador to the US Igor Munteanu, interviewed by public broadcaster Radio Chisinau (April 5). “It’s about RIA Novosti, TASS, RTR and Ren TV, which are extremely aggressive. We should not allow them to spread their wings. We should take action to promptly sanction such manifestations and we should no doubt pay close attention to the military exercises taking place in Transnistria.” A thin strip of land in eastern Moldova, Transnistria declared itself independent in 1992, aligned with the Russian Federation, but internationally unrecognized. It hosts about 1,500 Russian troops.

As symbols are essential for spreading propaganda, the Moldovan Parliament also banned the display of the V and Z letters used to identify Russian military vehicles in Ukraine and Soviet patriotic ribbons. This caused pro-Russian parliamentarians, some owning Russian-language broadcast outlets, to flip their lids. As with other like-minded, preparations are underway for parades celebrating Soviet Victory Day, May 9.

“There is no time more important for truth telling and fact-based reporting than in a circumstance like this where misinformation is running wild,” said USAID Administrator Samantha Power alongside Moldova president Maia Sandu in Chisinau (April 6). “We look at ways that we can support the fight against disinformation, and this is a phenomenon that isn't just plaguing Moldova, it is something we see in the United States. We see social media companies that themselves take what they claim is a very laissez faire position on what happens on their platforms, but in fact, it is not laissez faire. In fact, there are algorithms that make more extreme voices and voices that do not tell the truth more likely to come up in one's feed than those that tell the truth and relay the facts.”

See also...

• Hot Topics - Propaganda