Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 13/12/2021
The protests held throughout Serbia these days have brought a whole wave of disinformation. Every day, tabloids from the country try to discredit the protests against certain government decisions, and this time they included the MP of Self-Determination, Fitore Pacolli, in the whole story.
“Yesterday, the member of Kurti’s Self-Determination, Fitore Pacolli, was in Sabac. On her Facebook profile, she boasted that she participated in the rally together with Natalija Stojmenovic from “Let’s not drown Belgrade”, who joined and participated in the protests yesterday,” Nacionalist reported.
“MEMBER OF ALBIN KURTI’S PARTY AT THE PROTEST IN SABAC?!”, the website Nacionalist.rs made a “sensational” announcement.
They added a translation of the announcement of the MP from Kosovo and one of the activists from Serbia, who announced that Natalija Stojmenovic led live broadcasts from the protest in Sabac.
In her announcement, Pacolli stated that she was in Sabac on November 27 and that she met with Natalija Stojmenovic. She did not mention the protests but that she participated in the conference.
“After Montenegro, the Green Balkan Network conference organized by the European Green Parties and NDI is held in Sabac, Serbia. At this conference, within the panel “Political Parties: Gender Equality and Inclusion”, I presented the role of the Self-Determination Movement in the inclusion of women in leading positions in public institutions of the state of Kosovo. Participants were interested to understand how the Self-Determination Movement managed to exceed the quota for gender equality in the last two election cycles. All members of the Self-Determination Party in the parliamentary elections in 2019 and 2021 managed to secure seats in parliament without the help of the quota for gender equality”, states Pacoli in her announcement. So, there isn’t a single word about the protests in Sabac, where a group of hooligans attacked the protesters using batons and hammers.
Considering the fact that the member of the Self-Determination Party was in Sabac on November 27, but that she was there because of the conference on gender equality and not because of the protest, we rate this announcement 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.