The activities of law enforcement agencies give the impression that the only liar in the Republic of Latvia who has turned lying into a business is Niks Endziņš. However, this is not the case, as information resources maintained by other persons and even international organizations to deceive the public continue to operate unhindered. One of them is kla.tv, which distributes its propaganda against the paradigms existing in the society in several dozen languages, including Latvian.
The media reported on kla.tv a year ago, reported this year, and taking into account the systematic hauling of the professional liar Niks Endziņš through the courts (one hearing also took place yesterday), one might think that such a fate has also awaited the characters of kla.tv. But - nothing. This week, Neatkarīgā noticed an outdoor advertisement of this fake news creator on a car in the streets of Riga. "The largest - independent - media in the world. Different news - without censorship." So here, too, someone maintains and promotes this den of information conspiracy, while the supervisory authorities continue to not know what to do with it.
The content of conspiracy den consists of videos written in German, which are further translated and spoken in other languages. Grouped by category. Education, culture, science, politics, environment, etc. Like an Internet news television. But the content is not at all like ordinary media.
Here are some examples of their content titles: "Destruction and manipulation through movies and music", "Aborted babies used for vaccine creation", "Coronavirus vaccine: bigger threat to health than the disease itself?".
Practically all content is based on suspicion, which treats the world order established by the majority as the purposeful creation of evil forces. Urges people not to believe in the good intentions of governments and the pharmaceutical industry to save humanity from the devastating virus. Urges not to believe in the usefulness of vaccination. Not to believe in the concern of global media groups for democracy. Not to believe in the safety of 5G.
With the professional liar Endziņš, everything is much simpler. His lies were primitive. The most important thing was to get a lot of clicks on a fake post so he can make money with ads. Fake terrible crimes, dead celebrities, explosion in the supermarket and similar posts. Yesterday's court hearing focused on video recording by Endziņš on January 30, titled “The corona virus is in Latvia! Please share and warn others!” They are verifiable lies, because officially - the coronavirus arrived in Latvia a couple of months later.
In contrast, kla.tv stories are much more refined, as they challenge well-known things about which doubts and differences of opinion are possible - be it the profits of the pharmaceutical industry, the usefulness of vaccination, the imposition of liberal ideology, the Greta Thunberg project, 5G or the work of the current government for the benefit of society. Even quite sensible people also tend to talk about these topics, but kla.tv stories give a dark, intimidating mood to all content.
How can the average viewer check whether aborted human embryos were not used in vaccine research in Switzerland many years ago. One fellow is very solemnly talking about this, the other is solemnly listening. But in Latvia and a few dozen other countries, someone takes this story, translates it and thousands of naive people get another confirmation that we live in some zombie apocalypse. And the main problem is that it happens very convincingly. It seems that the maintainers of this information themselves uncritically believe in what they feed their audience. No wonder, really. According to foreign media reports, the site is made up of a Swiss-based Christian fanatic sect and has followers in many countries. There are also all sorts of sects in Latvia. The state has not banned these sects. Consequently, in immature minds, these fanatics continue to sow doubts, deceptions and fears. What to do with it?
While the police are able to catch and the court punish only the primitive liar Endziņš, leading officials preach media literacy and critical thinking. Select media and similar organizations, using project money, live on the opposite side of the coin, questioning and exposing almost everything that is heard in public space. As a result, the exposers themselves tend to spread misinformation, either accidentally or not. In such a situation, the public themselves have to deal with the sorting of the flow of information into usable and garbage ones.
On Monday in Bauska, President Egils Levits met with local young people and spoke about the need to protect democracy from misinformation in the information space:
"It's a problem we all need to be aware of. To combat this, we need to promote our media literacy, which is the ability to handle the information space, to avoid manipulation, to be able to recognize true news from fake news, to think critically, analytically. In the digital information space, everyone can express their opinion nowadays, which is unfortunately easy to manipulate. We subconsciously choose a space that confirms what we think, and so information bubbles are formed. People do not even think that there are other information bubbles besides where they themselves are,” LETA agency retells what the President said. “Therefore, it gives a subjective impression that what I learn, for example, on the Facebook platform, is the truth that the whole society thinks. And it's a dangerous image that is easily manipulated by things like bots and algorithms. In addition, by providing a this environment with a lot of personal information, it is much easier for algorithms to profile each user. Manipulators usually influence a person's political views, opinions on various topical issues, controversial topics.”
Therefore, a car driving around in Riga with the inscription “Different news - without censorship” is even more dangerous to the intellectual health of the society than the flat lies of Niks Endziņš.