The decision enacted by the Government to ask for assistance aid in the fight against the COVID-19 is a positive one, and it comes in a moment when our country is a fully-fledged member of the NATO Alliance, no matter the efforts of certain media outlets to present this fact in a negative context.
The portal Republika.mk in the late afternoon on 30.03.2020, at 19.11, published a short article on the assistance aid that Albania sought from NATO, posting a question in the headline, whether our Government will act in the same manner?
In the meantime, at 19:28, the Government on its official web-page published the conclusions from the 31st Session held the very same day, among which one conclusions states as follows: The The “Government concluded today to ask NATO to trigger the mechanisms for civil protection in the case of Extraordinary conditions by the Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Center – EADRCC), and delegated responsibility to the working group coordinated by the Secretariat for European Affairs, that will coordinates the International aid, to prepare a list of priorities that need necessary assistance from within these mechanisms.”
Looking at these facts anyone would conclude that the Government of North Macedonia, following the public discourse, enacted a decision in the best interest of its citizens, and decided to ask assistance aid from NATO Aliance as its member. Yet, when analyzing the timing of publishing the articles, first by republika.mk (19:11) and then the Government (19:38) we can notice that in between the two there are only 27 minutes. The only sensible conclusion is that by the time Republika published the article the Government had already enacted the decision.
Another interesting fact is that only 10 minutes after the Gvoernment published its conclusions from that day’s session, at 19:48, Republika published a new article titled: “We haven’t wait a single day: The Government ask assistance from NATO because of the coronavirus”.
By doing this, the portal within only 37 minutes offers its readers 2 contradictory articles on the same topic.
The second article however, has the role to “flop” the first one, whose actual aim is to discredit the Government and provoke mistrust among the citizens in the way the isntitutions are managing the health and economic aspects of this crisis.
Another interesting fact for the readers is that the day when North Macedonia became fully fledge NATO member is 27.03.2020 which is actually the day when the Government through the Embassy of the USA in Skopje submitted the Ratification of the NATO treaty to Washington.
The portal Republika, has pulled out this mini adventure in only 37 minutes and within it managed to share both articles on few large Facebook pages, officially anonymous yet regularly used by this portal for content dissemination. Namely, the first article is posted on a total of 5 FG pages with a high number of potential followers 549.609 while the second article is posted on 4 FB pages with a total number of potential followers of 417.921.
The decision enacted by the Government to ask for assistance aid in the fight against the COVID-19 is a positive one, and it comes in a moment when our country is a fully-fledged member of the NATO Alliance, no matter the efforts of certain media outlets to present this fact in a negative context.
NATO Alliance in these moments will be of huge assistance for all its members and even wider.
FINANCED BY
This project was funded in part through a U.S. Embassy grant. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the implementers/authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Government.
PARTNERS
