One of latest episodes of STV1’s current affairs show News and Comments (Správy a komentáre) provoked outrage among the public but also among several politicians. MEP Vladimír Bilčík, who is involved in the fight against misinformation in the EP, calls on RTVS (STV) Director General Jaroslav Rezník to dismiss the head of news and current affairs Vahram Chuguryan.

Bilčík’s reaction comes after the participation of Ján Čarnogurský in Tuesdays's News and Comments, giving the classic hoaxes about the Russian history of Crimea, the start of the war in South Ossetia and Abkhazia by Georgia itself, or the armament of Ukraine, which threatens Russia. Moderator Katarína Martinková left the misinformation in the interview unanswered, and so Čarnogurský’s participation managed to bring chaos.

"In the last 2 months, last time yesterday, there have been incidents in RTVS news in which people firmly connected with the disinformation scene or directly misinformation spread by non-democratic regimes have been covered by public service news," Bilčík said. As RTVS has not apologized to the public for its many recent failures and has not been remedied, he publicly calls on Jaroslav Rezník to dismiss RTVS director of news and current affairs, Vahram Chuguryan, who has direct responsibility.

"I am shocked that misinformation and well-known misinformers are being given space in public newscasts at a time when our neighbor Ukraine was attacked by an aggressive dictator with the help of disinformation machinery and the Slovak Security Council is meeting extraordinarily. Our country cannot embarrass itself by leaving the explanation of the key circumstances of the conflict in Ukraine to a Kremlin ideologue, or even directly letting people from the disinformation media produce news articles,” said Bilčík.

The management of RTVS did not apologize for the News and Comments case, according to Omediach.com, the management of the news at its yesterday's meeting did not have a problem with Martinková's show.

At the beginning of February, the former moderator of the discussion of the Extra Plus disinformation website, editor Radovan Kondrlík, gave space to Roman Michelek, whom he described as a political scientist, which gave the audience the impression that he was an independent expert. Michelko routinely publishes comments in disinformation media such as Extra plus, Country and Age, General News, Infovojna, Slobodný vysielač. However, he is also a political opponent of the current president, as he ran and was vice-president for the Homeland Party, Stefan Harabin.

From 2000 to 2008, Vahram Chuguryan worked for Slovak Television as a foreign policy editor. In 2005, he interviewed Vladimir Putin. The latter was so satisfied with the result that when he had a joint press conference with the then President of the Slovak Republic Ivan Gašparovič in the Presidential Palace, the head of the Kremlin did an unusual thing. At the end of the press conference in the presence of journalists from Slovakia and abroad, he asked where Chuguryan was among the journalists and went to meet him in person.