Name: Margo Gontar
Age: 29
Education: Journalism at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
Profession: Co-founder of StopFake.org
Did you know? She is a singer and a songwriter for a synth-pop band Anakard.
The 2016 U.S. presidential election and the U.K. Brexit referendum brought the phrases “post-truth’” and “fake news” into the global vocabulary. But while the West has only just declared war against propaganda and lies, Ukrainian journalists have been fighting on the front lines against falsehood before much of the world realized the dangers of disinformation.
When Russia invaded eastern Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, instructors and students of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy Journalism School launched a project to track and debunk false news about Ukraine and the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution. Much of the nonsense emanated from Russia.
Since then, StopFake.org has grown into a fact-checking platform in 11 languages and acquired a huge body of knowledge about Kremlin propaganda that other nations can learn from.
On Nov. 3, the StopFake co-founder and host, Margo Gontar, received a prestigious award at the National Democratic Institute 2017 Disinformation vs. Democracy Dinner in Washington, D. C.
Every month Gontar and her team spend hundreds of hours reading and watching news in Russian and foreign media outlets. Not only do they track, translate and debunk fake news, but they also study the effects of propaganda and teach others how to identify hoaxes.
As StopFake.org has been growing, the disinformation machine has evolved too, Gontar says. “In the beginning there were simple stories that we could easily debunk with one click. Now we deal more with manipulative stories and questionable experts and witnesses. Fake news has become more complex, with more elements,” she says.
Today, StopFake.org deals with anti-Ukrainian falsehood coming not only from Russia, but from foreign media too, such as when the British newspaper The Independent ranked Kyiv as the most dangerous city in the world, or The New York Times claimed that Ukraine had supplied missile engines to North Korea.
With more countries confronting the same issue, StopFake’s expertise has become invaluable. “The attitude to us has significantly changed. Before we were interesting because of the situation in Ukraine. Now we are interesting because we have experience in a matter that many can relate to,” Gontar said.
Besides this project, Gontar two years ago co-launched Dostupno.ua, which monitors how accessible Kyiv’s public spaces are for people with disabilities.
