Germany’s foreign minister Thursday warned NATO members against taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to spread “disinformation,” “propaganda” and “fake news.”
Speaking ahead of a video teleconference of alliance foreign ministers, Heiko Maas said, “There are some who abuse this situation for propaganda purposes” and try to show themselves in a better light.
He urged both the European Union and NATO to take counter measures to ensure available information is “fact-based” and not “fake news.”
Maas did not name specific nations, but the Reuters news agency, citing a document it had reviewed last month, reports the EU claimed Russian media had launched a significant disinformation campaign against the West to generate panic and sow distrust regarding the governmental responses to the crisis.
Reuters reports Moscow denied the allegations.