In Facebook, journalist Nastia Stanko is being bullied after receiving award from Ministry of Defense

The "Hromadske TV" journalist Nastia Stanko and the speaker for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Oksana Havryliuk are being bullied in the social network Facebook. The bullying started since June 10, when  Stanko was awarded by the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Stepan Poltorak on occasion of the Journalist day “for a considerable personal contribution to the development of national military journalism, informational policy in the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Ukraine”. This was reported by “Detector Media”.

What happened is on Facebook a number of bloggers and regular users (including anonymous ones) started criticizing the Ministry, demanding to withdraw the award from the journalist and to fire Oksana Havryliuk. Also, they keep quoting the words of Nastia Stanko and Oksana Havryliuk taken out of context that are supposed to show their "treachery" and "lack of patriotism".

On June 13, the website “Tverezyi Pohliad” published the bloggers “address” to the Ministry of Defense, where Nastia Stanko is accused of “demotivating” the public and “demoralizing” the army and the police, and awarding her is presented as “public humiliation” of the Minister of Defense.

The address was signed by Facebook users, including many anonymous ones, but some are well-known bloggers, such as Myroslav Oleshko and Viktor Trehubov.

“Hromadske TV” condemns the campaign against the journalist, but does not see any legal opportunities to stop the attacks against Nastia Stanko (for example, through court). Yet, it is considering options for organized response to the cyber-bullying.