A joint investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and partners has uncovered new information that rewrites the story of the fake news boom in the Macedonian town of Veles. A week before Election Day in 2016, BuzzFeed News revealed that young men and teens in Veles were running over a hundred websites that pumped out often false viral stories that supported Donald Trump. Media outlets from…
Maja Jovanovska, Tamas Bodoky, and Aubrey Belford Hungarians with links to the country’s pro-government media have embarked on a mass buy-up of Macedonian news outlets, part of a concerted push into the Balkans by media companies loyal to Viktor Orban. Company registration documents obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and partners show that, since last spring, two former senior executives of Hungarian public television network Magyar…