According to unconfirmed information, this is the editor Marina Ovsyannikova. She is currently under arrest.”
This is not old news. This is happening now.
The piece of news is taken from the user's tweet called @novaya_gazeta, posted the 14th of March of 22. Unfortunately this tweet was written in a situation of war. Russia invaded Ukraine, on 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which actually began in 2014.
At the beginning of the year 2014, Crimea became the main objective of one of the worst crises ever lived between the West and Russia from the time of the Cold War. During February of that same year, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, had already sent, quietly and unnoticed by the public, thousands of soldiers to Russia's bases that they had in Crimea, thanks to the Partition Treaty signed in 1997.
However, this is not the main topic of this article. If you want to know more about it, here’s the link to an report from the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60525350.
The main topic of this article is the power of information and, as consequence, the misinformation and disinformation. Nevertheless, before entering into the subject, it’s appropriate to know the meaning of these two concepts. The first one, misinformation, means “wrong information, or the fact that people are misinformed”, and, on the other hand, disinformation signifies “false information spread in order to deceive people. We could say that the slight difference is that misinformation is not done on purpose, unlike disinformation.
Nowadays everyone with a phone and a user in social media (doesn’t matter instagram, facebook, or the most acclimated to this matter is twitter), can share information. But, is this information true? This is the origin of the idea of fake news, being even one of the biggest threats for democracies. How can we control the veracity and truthfulness of this news? Is there a way to increase our safety about what they are telling us? In response to this, UNESCO created the GAPMIL, standing for Global Alliance for Partnerships on Media and Information Literacy and whose primary aim and goal is to promote international cooperation to ensure that all citizens have access to media and information competencies. I would like to emphasize the word all, “all citizens have access to media and information competencies.” 43.1% is Africa’s internet penetration rate as of December 2021, according to Statista, the German Database. Notwithstanding, if we analyze Europe’s intenter access of households during the same year, it duplicates Africa’s number, reaching 92%.
You wouldn’t read this article if you didn’t even have access to the internet. How lucky are we?
Occasionally, people tend to mislead these notions, we just mention, with freedom of press. If I have to be cautious with what I post, do I really have freedom of press? The answer to it is yes.
To live in a free press country means that newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations are able to express any opinions they want, even if they criticize the government and other organizations.
Freedom of the press was not long established in Western countries such as France, Spain, Italy, in 1981, 1966, 1948 respectively.
It’s important to differentiate news from our opinions, towards having a good mindset to make the internet a high-quality and safe place.
For all of these reasons, we celebrate Global Media and Information Literacy Week. It was António Guterres, UN Portuguese Secretary-General, the one to underline the values of trust and solidarity as being the joining piece for social cohesion and social breakthroughs for the common good.
Therefore, let’s cherish and be aware of our privilege, by treasuring the value of the internet and information.