Original article (in Serbian) was published on 23/09/2022
On September 21, the President of Serbia held a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, which the tabloids called “historic” – Vucic “dismantled the hypocrisy of the world” and “said it to their faces”. Despite the obvious verbal bias, Alo went a step further in its enthusiasm. As an illustration of the claim that the “world powers” listened to Vucic, they published a photo of a hall featuring many people, but the photo was actually taken during someone else’s speech – it was taken during the presentation of the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN at the very the beginning of the war. During Vucic’s speech, the hall was half empty. At the same time, the Serbian telegraph (Srpski telegraf) is delighted with the number of views on YouTube featuring Vucic’s speech, but, of course, it does not mention that these views largely come from “bots”.
Vucic’s speech at the UN Assembly is the central topic of today’s editions of tabloids, which are competing to give more praise to the president. Informer writes that Vucic “exposed the hypocritical policy of the world powers”, and Alo claims that he “told the truth to the whole world”, and they tell him: “well done, president”.
Kurir also used nice words and called the speech “brave” and something that happened “at the right time in the right place” and that after this, some countries will have “limited ability to pressure and intimidate us”.
Informer and Kurir, however, did not publish a photo of the hall during Vucic’s speech on their pages, which they probably would have done if the hall was full. However, during the speech of the President of Serbia, which was only one in a series of speeches held that day, the hall was half empty, as can be seen on the YouTube video.
Alo, however, decided to illustrate its text about Vucic’s historic speech using a picture from someone else’s speech.
Although the text does not explicitly claim that the photo was taken during Vucic’s speech, they do not mention anywhere that it was taken during a different session, so it can be concluded that more people listened to Vucic’s speech than was actually the case, since, in the photo they used, the hall looks much more frequented.
However, we are talking about a photo taken on February 28, at the very start of the Russian-Ukrainian war, during the speech of the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya.
As can be seen on the website of the European photo agency EPA, whose photojournalist Justin Lane is the author of this photo, there were significantly more people in the hall that day. In question was an emergency session of the General Assembly where the new conflict was discussed.
Vucic delivered his speech at the regular 77th session of the UN General Assembly, which began on September 13, and the general debate of member states (the UN Assembly consists of 193 countries) takes place from September 20 to 26. In addition to Vucic, representatives of Hungary, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, the USA, Estonia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cuba, the Republic of South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other countries also spoke on the second day of the debate.
YouTube commentators: “Hats off, president”
Another focus of our tabloids in reporting on this was the success of the video of Vucic’s speech on the UN channel.
Informer writes that the president’s speech had many views, and people around the world had only words of praise.
“Positive comments were sent by people from the USA, Germany, Romania, Croatia, as well as from certain African countries… “Thank you for one of the best speeches at the UN”, “As a German, I would like to have such a chancellor”, “This is a man of truth and courage”, are just some of the comments”, writes Informer.
Almost the same template was used by Alo:
“Vucic told the truth to the whole world and this delighted the citizens who never stop praising his speeches at the debate of world leaders at the UN General Assembly”, writes Alo and quotes comments from YouTube. “Foreigners praised him without hesitation and concluded that the world would be a much better place if we had more such leaders”.
The web portal of the Serbian telegraph, Republika, joined the praise, which focused on the fact that Vucic’s speech was at the very top of the reviews compared to the reviews of other speakers, if Biden’s speech is not counted.
“Domination in the UN! Vucic is side by side with Biden, far ahead of other world leaders! (…) At this moment, the Serbian president, who told the truth to the international community, is the most viewed”, Republika writes.
This is partially true – at the time of publication of this text, Biden’s speech has 207,000 views, followed by the President of the Philippines with 177,000 views, and Vucic with around 108,000. The leaders of some other countries, such as Britain, Canada or Ukraine, have three times fewer views.
Although it may sound from these tabloid texts that the world is delighted with his performance, judging by the number of views and comments under the YouTube video, the fact is, however, that a large number of commentators (and, at the same time, views) came precisely from Serbia.
Their activity resembles that of “bots”, as the comments are monotonous, repeated and use the same phrases such as ” he told everything to their faces”, “hats off” or “everything he said is true”.
