At a recent public debate organized by the Institute for European Policies and Reforms (IPRE) and moderated by IPN, a small conference room in Chișinău became a microcosm of a much larger battlefield. The topic was the role of the mass media in fighting disinformation, and the discussion felt less like an academic seminar and more like a gathering of frontline workers describing a war they wage daily. There were journalists, media regulators, civil society activists, and a handful of students, each carrying the weight of a question that has no simple answer: how do you defend the truth in…

The Wire’s Misleading Claims About UPI: A Fact-Check The Wire, a publication with a well-documented history of peddling misinformation, has once again attempted to manufacture a controversy where none exists. In a recent report, the outlet claimed that Indians have started abandoning the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for cash following Parliament’s passage of a bill that allegedly allows the government to impose a Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on some UPI transactions. According to The Wire, “data shows that these transactions have been slowing in the last five years, with cash flow increasing in the same period.” The report further claimed…