Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 6/9/2024; Author: Elma Murić
A satirical article from the Njuz website about Emmanuel Macron, was shared on some real news websites without clarification that it was not a real news story.
Buka published an article on August 29, 2024 with the following headline:
Macron, before departing for Belgrade, tries to find out if he is on Vulin’s list
The article states, among other things, that the French president is “still not sure” if he will visit Serbia because he has not “managed to find out if his name is on Vulin’s list” of undesirable persons in Serbia.
As long as I am not sure that I can enter Serbia without any issues, and that no one will question me at the border about my views on lithium mining, I will not set off on the trip. It is true that this visit has been planned for a long time, but I only found out yesterday that Vulin has made a list of people who are not welcome in Serbia, and what concerns me is his statement that he made the list according to his conscience, Macron said for Njuz.
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Macron also added that he is hopeful he is not on the list because he is neither a Bosnian nor a Croatian singer, but again, with Vulin, one can never be sure.
The article was published the same day on the Istok website. Both websites also shared the articles on their Facebook pages (1, 2).
What are the facts?
The article claiming that “Macron, before departing for Belgrade, is trying to find out if he is on Vulin’s list” was originally published on August 28 by the Njuz website, a well known satirical online magazine in Serbia. According to the website, Njuz has been “publishing fictional news since 2010”.
Njuz used French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to Serbia as a humorous commentary on the cases of public figures who had been detained at the Serbian border or denied entry into the country in the past.
The most recent such case occurred on August 26 of this year when Croatian singer Severina Vuckovic was detained at the Serbian border. Referring to previous cases in which Bosnian singer Selma Bajrami, actor Fedja Stukan, and former Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister Jovana Marovic were denied entry to Serbia, Radio Free Europe published a detailed article on August 27 about lists of “undesirable” people in Serbia. They emphasized that Serbian officials Ivica Dacic and Aleksandar Vulin, who formerly served as the director of the Serbian Security Information Agency (BIA), have confirmed the existence of such lists.
What had been speculated, Interior Minister Ivica Dacic confirmed – Serbia has a list of “undesirable” citizens of neighboring and other countries who are not welcomed due to their political views.
(…)
Aleksandar Vulin, Deputy Prime Minister and former director of the Serbian Security Information Agency (BIA), boasted that during his leadership of the secret service, he personally created lists of those he deemed undesirable to enter Serbia. These lists have included pop stars, actors, politicians, and even Russian citizens involved in protests against Vladimir Putin’s war policies.
Obviously, the article on the Njuz website is a satirical publication. The alleged statements of the French president are fictional, intended to humorously and ironically comment on current events in Serbia regarding the lists of “undesirable” persons.
Magazine Start republished this satirical article on August 29, but alongside the mention that Njuz is a satirical web portal, they included a note stating that “the interview with the French president is a parody of events related to the cases of Severina, Selma Bajrami, Fedja Stukan… at the Serbian border and Vulin’s list of undesirable visitors to Serbia”.
On the other hand, Buka and Istok websites who also republished the same articles, didn’t have such clarifications. There is no indication in any of the articles of those two websites that the content is satirical or fictional. Although Njuz is cited as the source in these articles, the authors did not include a link to the original article or the Njuz homepage, nor did they in any other way make it clear to the audience that the content comes from a web portal that exclusively publishes satirical content. The satirical nature of the article was also not indicated in the Facebook posts of these articles neither.
Additionally, Buka and Istok are informative news websites, and they published articles with fictional claims in sections where they usually post real, non-fiction news. In Buka’s case, this satirical article appeared in the Culture and Entertainment, while on Istok, it was published in the World section.
Based on the facts, the article about the French president “trying to find out if he is on Vulin’s list” on the Buka website, without a clarification that it is satire, is rated as fake news. Other such publications without a clear clarification are rated as redistribution of fake news.
