Original article (in Montenegrin) was published on 9/7/2024; Author: Jelena Jovanović
A three-day NATO summit marking the 75th anniversary of the military Alliance begins in Washington. The main topic of the meeting will be support for Ukraine, including a new plan for coordinating the delivery of equipment and training its armed forces.
Outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, in an interview with CBS ahead of the summit, said that the most important thing is for NATO to support Kyiv to ensure Ukraine wins the conflict with Russia.
However, his statement was used by domestic portals to create inaccurate and misleading headlines.
“Stoltenberg threatens world war: Putin must lose on the battlefield,” writes the portal IN4S in an article published as one of the most important pieces of information on the website.
Although this is not stated in the IN4S article, the text was taken from the RT Balkan portal, where it was published several hours earlier with the same title and content, and shared on their official Facebook page.
The portal articles do not clarify to whom Stoltenberg was threatening and how, nor are the words “threat” or “world war” mentioned except in the headline.
So what exactly did Stoltenberg say?
Answering a journalist’s question, he said that no one had said that Ukraine’s NATO membership would happen in 10 years, but that it depends on whether they will win the war with Russia.
“No one has said exactly 10 years, but it’s obvious that it is a very serious issue to bring in Ukraine. Because Ukraine is now a country at war. Ukraine has been attacked by Russia. So the most important thing we should do is to step up our support to Ukraine to ensure that Ukraine prevails. That’s a precondition for any future membership for Ukraine,” said the head of the Alliance.
He added that the only way to achieve peace is to convince Putin that he will not win on the battlefield.
“He has to sit down and accept a solution where Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation in Europe, and the only way to convince Putin that he will not win on the battlefield is broad military support to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg added.
Therefore, it is clear that Stoltenberg did not “threaten a world war,” nor can this be concluded if we look at the rest of the interview. He merely reiterated certain positions that have been publicly known for some time.
We have often witnessed his statements being taken out of context, as was the case with the viral statement on social media that “Ukraine can join NATO only if it defeats Russia.” However, Stoltenberg then also said that the most important is to ensure that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation in Europe because if Putin wins the war, there is no question of NATO membership to discuss.
Due to the previously mentioned explanations and the accurate transcript of the NATO Secretary-General’s statement, the media reports by IN4S and RT Balkan are rated as disinformation and clickbait.
The “Disinformation” rating is given to a media report that contains a “mix“ of facts and incorrect or half-true content. In such cases, the media may not necessarily be aware of incorrect information being published alongside the true ones. Also, this grade will be given to media reports with false attributions or titles that do not reflect the text in terms of information accuracy.
The “Clickbait” rating is given to a media report whose title has no grounds in the article that follows. Such articles and features aim to attract the consumer’s attention with a sensational title, promising content that does not exist. Such reports are mostly motivated by financial interest, i.e. to increase readership.
