Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs website to “expose” fake news by using big “FAKE” stamps

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova pledged on February 15 to launch a section exposing fake news on the Ministry website. The page would also expose inaccurate posts from leading Western media and officials from various countries, Zakharova said, noting that exposing fake news would involve linking both to the original sources and to more reliable data.

On February 22, the corresponding page was launched, but it did not quite look as Zakharova had promised.

When this article was being written, the Ministry webpage titled “Examples of publications posting false information about Russia” had four items, each consisting of a screenshot of a particular news piece with a big red stamp reading “FAKE” sprawled across its upper-right-hand corner.

Under the screenshots was the line: “This article contains data that does not correspond to reality.” The Ministry fails, however, to offer any arguments to refute the information written in the articles.

The ministry’s website also has a “refutation” webpage, but this has not been updated since October 2016.