Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 12/01/2022
While nationalism and extremism are flourishing in almost all countries in the region, websites are regularly adding fuel to the fire. It is simple enough for a column or comment to appear somewhere, for the facts to be distorted and various, dangerous narratives to be placed.
This time it is about the website called “Informer” from Serbia, which published the following title on January 10:
IT IS SICK! Milo’s website makes a “carcinogenic list” of SERBS TO BE SHOT?!?
A slightly different title was published by the website “Region”:
A SCANDAL! MILO’S MEDIA MADE A LIST OF SERBS TO BE SHOT: Porfirije, Vucic and Dodik are on the top of the hit list
The headlines are accompanied by an almost identical text stating that the “heated hysteria in Sarajevo’s media as well as some media in Podgorica” was caused by the so-called “magnificent celebration” marking the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Srpska.
The fact that the Montenegrin website Analitika published a “carcinogenic” hit list of Serbs proves this is true. The list, called “Cancer”, includes Patriarch Porfirije, Metropolitan Joanikije, Presidents Aleksandar Vucic and Milorad Dodik, Assembly Speaker Ivica Dacic, Academician Matija Beckovic, Minister Aleksandar Vulin, politicians Andrija Mandic, Bosko Obradovic and Vojislav Seselj, and historians Aleksandar Rakovic and Cedomir Antic. The website Analitika calls for removing this “cancer” before it is too late. All that remains is to explain how Djukanovic’s website wants these Serbs to be removed?”
What is it all about?
On January 10, this year, Milos Prelevic’s commentary was published on the website of Analitika, and the above-mentioned websites reacted to it. In the text entitled “Cancer”, Prelevic writes about a new wave of chauvinism that has affected all countries in the region. We remind you that this is a journalistic genre that implies the author’s standpoint.
“It is unexpected for anyone. Unusual to anyone. And probably more and more acceptable. It is a new wave of chauvinism, the strongest demonstration of which has perhaps been seen in recent days in several countries, including, of course, ours”.
An illustration accompanies the commentary, a collage of photographs, signed as PA (Portal Analitika), featuring church dignitaries, politicians and historians from Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Some of them have been publicly declared, while others have been perceived by at least part of the Montenegrin and regional public as advocates of nationalist ideologies.
There are no calls for shooting or killing anyone in the commentary or illustration.
Prelevic’s comment was published only a day after the ceremonial parade in Banja Luka, which websites whose publications we are analyzing described as “a magnificent celebration”.
Namely, January 9, the Day of the Republic of Srpska, was marked in that city, which the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared to be unconstitutional twice – back in 2015 and 2019. In 2013, the Venice Commission assessed it as discriminatory because other nations and communities in BiH consider it a painful memory. On that day, in 1992, the so-called Assembly of the Serb People in BiH passed “the Declaration on the Proclamation of the Republic of the Serb People of Bosnia and Herzegovina” in Sarajevo, which included Serb autonomous areas, i.e., areas with a majority of the Serb population in the then Socialist Republic of BiH.
The commemoration is taking place in the midst of what many say is the biggest crisis in BiH since the end of the war, given blockades of state institutions and plans by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik to create parallel institutions in the RS entity and withdraw state-level powers. All this is happening only four days after the United States imposed sanctions on them “due to corrupt activities and threats to the stability of BiH”.
The event, which was attended by a significant number of representatives of the Serbian state, as well as Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church Porfirije, was also attended by convicted war criminal Vinko Pandurevic, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for crimes against humanity, including the Srebrenica genocide. Among the guests was Darko Mladic, the son of the war commander of the RS Army, Ratko Mladic.
Taking all this into account, we rate this publication of the websites “Informer” and “Region” as “disinformation” and “biased reporting”
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 does not need to be aware of the inaccurate information published along with the truth. Also, this rating is given to reports that have false attributions or titles that do not reflect the text in terms of the accuracy of information.
“Biased reporting” rating is given to a media report which clearly favors facts, attitudes and conclusions that correspond to a particular narrative, often disregarding the rule of contacting the other party when making claims that are detrimental to one’s reputation or portrayed by certain actors in a negative light. One of the forms of biased reporting is the selective presentation of facts, where facts that support a particular thesis are emphasized, while facts that do not confirm it tend to be omitted. A very emotional way of writing usually accompanies such media reports. They may or may not be inaccurate, but as a rule, they do not show the whole picture but only represent those facts that correspond to the preferred narrative.