Original article (in Slovenian) was published on 29/09/2022
The portal Zurnal24.si published on 18 September an article whose headline stated that bills for October will be significantly higher and that 200,000 households will not pay them. The subheading added that households have been threatening for a while to engage in civil disobedience by refusing to pay their bills.
It was not until the first paragraph that the article mentioned this was about resistance to high energy prices in the United Kingdom.
The article summed up a piece on the cost-of-living crisis in the United Kingdom published four days earlier by the UK portal Euronews.green, which focuses on environmental news. But Zurnal cited the UK portal only once when they explained that resistance against high bills has been announced by the Don’t Pay movement in the UK, an independent and non-profit movement that encourages Britons to stop paying their electricity bills.
An Internet Archive Wayback Machine snapshot of the web page from 17 September, a day before the Zurnal24.si piece was published, shows that 189,000 people had pledged to not pay their bills. The latest data, as of 28 September, shows the number of pledges rose to 192,000.
Once a million people make the pledge, they will stop paying energy bills, exerting collective pressure on the British government, the movement has announced. They will demand that the government, the energy regulator Ofgem and energy firms meet with the representatives of the movement and negotiate on electricity prices.
The British energy regulator Ofgem announced on 26 August that the cap on average annual household energy costs would be set at 3,549 pounds as of 1 October. This is 80 percent above what the cap would be if energy prices between April and September were considered.
On 8 September the British government announced measures to mitigate the energy crisis. Among other things, it will set the cap on annual energy costs per household at 2,500 pounds. As early as July it had already decided to extend a 400-pound discount to households that have electricity meters, whereby the savings will be spread over six months through the winter.
In a survey that the British Office for National Statistics conducted among adults between 31 August and 11 September, 78 percent of Britons reported higher living costs in the preceding month, and 48 percent said they found it difficult or somewhat difficult to pay their energy bills.
Office for National Statistics data shows that in August the consumer price index, which includes electricity and gas, rose by 8.6 percent at the annual level, driven primarily by higher energy prices.
According to the Slovenian Statistical Office, Slovenia’s annual inflation rate was 11 percent, largely due to higher fuel and energy prices, which rose by 36.7 percent.
In their response to the analysis by Razkrinkavanje.si, Zurlan24.si acknowledged that cursory readers could be misled into believing that the article is about Slovenia, but they said the first paragraph made it clear the report is about the UK. “The content is relevant given that energy prices have spiked here as well. Therefore, we think the heading, which is limited in length, reflects the content of the article.”
The heading does not make it clear that the events referred to in the article concern the UK, not Slovenia. According to the Razkrinkavanje.si methodology, we have therefore designated the heading as clickbait.
The portion of the heading claiming that electricity bills will be significantly higher in October is true.
The portion that claims 200,000 households will not pay their bills is false.
