Izvor: N1 televizija, 24.Maj.2018, 14:30 (ažurirano 02.Apr.2020.)
Fake news dominates tabloids in Serbia
The so-called fake news has spread through Serbia’s media, especially in tabloids, a website editor told N1 Belgrade on Thursday.
Stefan Janjic, the editor of the Fake news tragac (Fakenews Seeker) website, said the that Alo tabloid published 358 front pages in 2017, with 237 of them having headlines that could be characterised as false or manipulative.
With the other tabloid, Informer, the numbers are even higher, the Fakenws tragac survey has shown. Its 302 front >> Pročitaj celu vest na sajtu N1 televizija << pages carried 362 fake or manipulative news.
Janjic said that his website’s analysis showed that the media which broke the Code of Journalism most often were leaders in the publishing of the fake news, but that such news also appeared in media considered professional and unbiased.
He has said that the fake news is published in three different ways: through the so-called copy/paste journalism where the social networks’ or other media articles are used without any checking; as a hidden marketing, usually in the stories about health; and through political propaganda which is, he says, often linked to nationalism.
Janjic added that there were several ways to differentiate a fake from the actual news, including paying attention to the sourcing, or checking the dates when something was supposed to happen and the translation of the original article.
Aleksandra Krstic, from the Political Sciences Faculty, has added that in order recognise the fake news, one has to have a high-quality education, while the society needs developed levels of democracy and media freedom.
She added that the fake news aimed “at seduction and manipulation to push through a political agenda of a certain political group.”
Apart from political interests, the fake news mostly targets the issues of migrants, climate changes, LGBT population and vaccine, Krstic has added.
Janjic has said that the relevant opinion polls on the impact the fake news had on public do not exist, but the impression is that they are published to fit a majority opinion of the population which, he adds, has a distance to the marginal groups and inclines more to Russia than to the European Union.
“Media take an assumed picture and then embed the fake news, thus cementing it,” Janjic said, adding that even consumers who recognised the fake news “enjoy in the lie that pleases them.”
