When COVID-19 hit the world, the pressure on professional fact checkers became higher: their work became even more essential but also more intense. I spoke with Sabīne Bērziņa a professional fact checker from Re: Check, a project of The Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism Re:Baltica. She is hunting for false claims spread by politicians, mainstream and social media that have resonated with the public. Sabīne shares her experience as a fact checker from the Post-Soviet country amidst the global pandemic and talks about crazy conspiracy theories which spread globally.

Hi Sabine! You have probably noticed the surge of fake news when the corona crisis started. What kind of fakes were the most frequent and highly resonated?

We definitely noticed a very significant surge in fake news stories because of the corona crisis. What were the most popular stories? It is often hard to determine because you can see that certain fake news stories had a significant reach but that is always like a reach within a certain audience. It is very difficult to tell what kind of myths are shared by most of the Latvian population and what kind of myths are only prevalent within the certain segment of the population. The stories which were widely distributed were different versions of statements claiming that coronavirus is no more dangerous than a seasonal flu, and the news media or politicians are making a fuss out of nothing. There were also some of the theories which were very popular. For example, statements that coronavirus is a biological weapon, made by either China or the U.S. There are theories which seek to blame a particular person, and as everywhere, we have a lot of Bill Gates-related conspiracy theories. There are also a lot of different fake news stories on coronavirus remedies. For example, ones saying that you can just use garlic to protect yourself from coronavirus.

You mentioned conspiracy theories about Bill Gates which are being spread globally. I think it is very relevant to my next question about so-called Globalisation of misinformation. Do you think that despite the country’s economic and political situation, there are similar patterns in disinformation spread?

I think that globalisation of misinformation is a bit like globalisation itself in general. A lot of people are saying that the processes are becoming more and more global when actually there are still clear power centers. When it comes to Latvia, the power centers’ misinformation and disinformation come from are the U.S., which is I guess like a global leader, and maybe Russia, which is a powerful player in the region. Those are two sources where information comes from, gets translated and adapted to the national context. Other than that, I would not necessarily say that there is a globalisation happening, because local Latvian conspiracy theories do not “leave” the borders of Latvia. It is all the way around. Surprisingly, many conspiracy theories are very U.S.-specific, and they become widespread in Latvia. For example, there is this popular QAnon conspiracy theory basically saying that there is a shadow government working against Donald Trump and his supporters. We have certain believers of this theory in Latvia as well. This is odd because this theory has nothing to do with Latvia. Then, sometimes we encounter surprising sources of disinformation. Last week I fact checked a video from Brazil.

Local Latvian conspiracy theories do not “leave” the borders of Latvia. It is all the way around. Surprisingly, many conspiracy theories are very U.S.-specific and they become widespread in Latvia.

What can you tell about the post-Soviet space in particular? Do you have some examples of fakes which were widespread among the Russian-speaking audience?

I am not the biggest expert on the Russian-speaking audience, but I can tell that the fake news targeted at this audience do usually have a lot in common with those targeted at Latvian population. However, they are likely more impacted by Russian language media. For example, my colleague wrote a fact-checking article about one fake news story. The story was about Latvia’s inability to deal with coronavirus, and it allegedly means that Latvia will soon have to turn to Russia for help. That is not actually happening. I cannot say whether it is because of the successful policies during the corona virus or because of mere luck, but we have dealt with coronavirus very very well. For example, for a while we have had zero to a one-digit number of cases. So, that kind of stories are completely ungrounded.

When it comes to the Post-Soviet space itself, it is difficult to talk about it. I don’t know for sure in which countries the same theories are spread. Yet we have noticed odd fake stories that have nothing to do with the Post-Soviet space itself,  but spread within the Post-Soviet countries. For example, a colleague of mine started working on a story based on a Facebook post in Russian about the ex-Atlanta police chief who has recently left her job because of the shootings in Walmart parking lot, when a black man was killed. This post positioned her as if she was still a police chief adding a quote were she supposedly said that everyone in Atlanta had 30 days to arm themselves or leave the city, because the protesters could not be controlled. Of course, she had not said it at all. When we were googling this quote, we found another organisation in Kazakhstan which factchecked the same story. This organisation is also a part of Poynter network as we are. How come this story popped up in Kazakhstan? We found it really odd. We also found the same news story in Ukraine. Interestingly, we have not found any of these claims in English. So, this is a false news story that has been spread in the post-Soviet space. It is curious how come these countries have the same story circulated.

When you track the source of misinformation, who usually it is? Some companies, or have you encountered the cases where governments became the sources of misinformation?

We try to understand who the source of disinformation is as much as possible. Yet we have to differentiate between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is any false information while disinformation is false information made and spread on purpose. We encountered cases when the government spread wrongful information. Our Minister of finance and the Prime Minister have also been fact checked and proven to have made wrongful claims.

The sources of mis- and disinformation vary. Often, it is just local enthusiast who made some sort of claims which went viral.

We also have our local conspiracy theorists. It is basically a day-to-day operation for them to spread all sorts of different stories. They, for example, published translated videos from British conspiracy theorist David Icke, who claims that coronavirus is human-made (he is also known for spreading the theories on the world controlled by reptiles). We also have a subtitled version of globally known conspiracy theory movie “Plandemic”. Sometimes government officials become the sources for misinformation. For example, Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro. The government of Belarus was also a source of disinformation because President Lukashenko denied the existence of coronavirus. We had videos spread in Latvia in Russian language saying that coronavirus is a  lie since Belarus is doing well. That is not true, a lot of people got ill there because of denial.

Fact-checking is quite developed in the Western hemisphere, to what extent do you think the movement is growing in the Post-soviet space, and what in your opinion should be done to accelerate this process?

The crisis showed that fact checkers job is indespensable because disinformation spikes in uncontrollable amounts.

The movement is definitely growing in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. I think the journalists there are doing a very great job. Some times an obstacle could be the fact that some of the post-Soviet states have either never gotten out of the grasp of authoritarianism or unavailability of funding and resources for fact-checking. For instance, the U.S. fact-checking newsrooms consist of many journalists, while for example in our organisation there are only three people who do this job. We used to be two in the beginning. But I think it is getting better, especially because of the coronavirus. The crisis showed that fact checkers job is indispensable because disinformation spikes in uncontrollable amounts. More journalists are seeing why it is necessary and hence get more chances to apply for funding to open up their fact-checking operations.

Thank you so much, Sabine.

A pleasure.

If you want to upgrade your fact-checking skills, check out “Verification” module in our toolkit.

by Anastasiya Pak