Original article in Montenegrin was published on 08/12/2021
Original article in Serbian was published on 09/12/2021
It has long been known that disinformation is used to fuel tensions between states and nations.
When it comes to Serbia and Croatia, it is unnecessary to heat up tensions too much. As a rule, tabloids are in charge of that.
The website IN4S an article with the following title:
“Horrors of an animated movie from the neighborhood: Croatian nazi replica – Serbs and Jews as rats”
“A Croatian animated movie appeared these days, “rats leaving China”, as a replica of Fritz Hippler’s film: Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) which is the justification of concentration camps in the Third Reich!”, states IN4S and adds:
“The horrifying ‘cartoon’ describes the kingdom of Knin and the ‘aggressor rats’, which, according to this Nazi analogy, represent the Serbs.”
Tabloid Informer published an article with the following title:
“There is no end to the Ustasha madness! In the animated film for children, SERBS ARE SHOWN AS RATS ESCAPING FROM KNIN ON A TRACTOR!”
“In Croatia, the sick politics and hate speech towards Serbs does not subside, it manifests itself every day in all forms from street graffiti, through a reading list in schools, to cartoons for children talking about the Homeland War, presenting Serbs as rats who abused the people”.
The scandalous animated film “Homeland War for the youngest” talks about the royal city of Knin, where rats lived together with people for many years, and then decided “that all rats must live in a pure rat country, so they started harassing people”, alluding that the rats were Serbs who began harassing Croats. – They were a real temptation, they stole everything, from food, clothes, to tractors. When it seemed that there was no hope, the Musician from Cavoglav appeared with a magical flute – they say in the film in which Knin is released by the Musician luring rats into a tractor, which takes them from Knin,” Informer claims in its text.
Although it took a few minutes to establish that it was a satirical Facebook page, tabloids and other sources in Serbia and the rest of the region “got caught” and used this to raise panic over “Ustasha madness”. The following outlets in the SEE region who published the same story are: novicentar.rs, nasaborba, republika, rtrs.tv, srpskaistorija, srbijadanas, srpskacafe, srbin.info, pravda.rs, Alo. Considering the regional distribution of the topic, besides Montenegrin fact-checkers, Serbian Raskrikavanje also published the same debunk.
And yes, that’s exactly what is heard in the animated film. However, it should be clarified that this is not a Croatian animated film, but an old cartoon from the famous production Sily Symphony, which was often featured on television, and it’s based on the famous story of a musician who takes mice out of town with his flute.
The second, and most important thing in the whole story, is that, as can be clearly seen in the video published by Informer, it is written – Pretjerivac (Exaggerator).
Pretjerivac is a well-known satirical page from Croatia that often deals with the most sensitive topics and, through brutal humor, mocks reality, most often nationalism, right-wing movements.
This page has been removed from Facebook many times, and it is still inactive. Davor Bernardic, former leader of the Croatian SDP, spoke about this earlier, as well as other politicians from Croatia who even accused the HDZ of organizing the shutdown of satirical pages.
Anyone who enters this page’s TikTok channel will easily be convinced that this is a satirical page. It ridicules the Croatian national football team, the “patriotism of the HDZ”, Zdravko Mamic, right-wing and nationalist Velimir Bujanec, Croats from Herzegovina…
Since Informer presented the video of the satirical page, which actually mocks the Croatian side and actions in Knin, and the Ustasha singer Marko Perkovic Tompson, as “sick politics and hate speech towards Serbs”, we rate this post as disinformation.
The rating “disinformation” is given to a media report that contains a “mixture” of facts and inaccurate or semi-true content. In such cases, the media doesn’t need to be aware of the inaccurate information published along with the truth. Also, this assessment will treat reports that have false attributions or titles that do not reflect the text in terms of accuracy of information.
Also, this post received a rating for satire. “Satire” rating is given to media content that uses fictional news to depict reality satirically. This is an example of a media report that is not problematic if the media clearly indicates that it is satirical content. The aim of including this assessment in the methodology is to point out this type of content in situations where it may pretend to be a valid media report and become potentially harmful in case of further transmission without verification and a clear indication that it is a satire. In our methodology, this assessment is given only to the content for which the media, as the author, clearly emphasize that it is satire.
Edit: December 15, 2021
Websites Republika, Sputnik and Alo published a correction in their original text, clearly using the ethical standard of professional conduct of journalists and denying the original allegations, so we give them a rating for refuted. The rating “refuted” is given in cases when the media determines that the content falls under one of the negative reviews described above and refutes it in a clear and visible manner, in accordance with the principles.