NATO: Debunking of rape claim shows need for critical press

[DonViejo]

Source: Associated Press



SATURDAY, FEB 18, 2017 12:45 PM EST

MUNICH (AP) — NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says the rapid debunking of a claim that a German soldier serving as part of a NATO mission to Lithuania raped a teenage girl “underlines the importance of a free and independent media.”

The claim was made Tuesday in an anonymous email to a Lithuanian lawmaker and media outlets, but it was quickly investigated and found to be fake.

Rasa Jukneviciene, a lawmaker and former defense minister, on Saturday suggested that Russia may have invented the claim to discredit the new NATO force on its borders.

Stoltenberg said he didn’t know who was behind the claim, but told The Associated Press the incident shows “the best way to fight disinformation, lies, propaganda is to have an open and free debate and an independent, critical press.”

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Read more: http://www.salon.com/2017/02/18/nato-debunking-of-rape-claim-shows-need-for-critical-press/

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. There is evidence that the fake claim was planted by operatives working for Russian interests.

Sorry I don't have a link but it was in a report quoted in a thread I read just hours ago on DU.

[starshine00]

2. Russia Russia Russia

I swear I feel like Jan on the Brady Bunch whining "Marcia Marcia Marcia..." I am so sick of Putin and wish someone would put him out of his misery, which eventually they will I am sure.

[Crowman2009]

3. I have a feeling he'll wind up like Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu.

His own people will turn against him someday.

[starshine00]

4. I hope so

clearly he's on track to becoming king of the world...Jimmy Carter was so right about all the environmental policy he tried to launch, if he'd been listened to we'd have the electric car and solar everywhere and men like Putin would be in prison or in the sanitorium or dead.