The information portal "Kosova-sot.info" published an article yesterday (October 23) on its official Facebook page, with the caption "After the strike, teachers will also be paid with chickens!".
This post is accompanied by a photo with the text "Teachers will be paid with chickens", while school diaries with the Albanian text "Class diary" are also included.
After fact-checking, hibrid.info has determined that these claims in this article do not clarify the content of the news. They also do not clarify the country or state of origin of the news.
This becomes clear only in the content, where it is revealed that in a city in Uzbekistan, school teachers are paid in chickens and not in money.
Considering that this portal is registered in Kosovo (see here) and most of its readers are Albanian speakers (see here), such a generalizing title and with such an image can misinform readers, making them assume that the news is about Kosovo.
Link to the article published on Facebook by the portal "Kosova-sot.info":
Excerpt from the article published on the portal "Kosova-sot.info":
According to foreign media reports, in a city in Uzbekistan, school teachers are paid with chickens and not cash.
Authorities in Nukus, in the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, have distributed chickens and some newly hatched chicks due to a lack of money in the country's banks, writes the BBC.
After research conducted through online search engines, hibrid.info managed to find the article published in 2016 in the British medium "BBC". (see here)
So, "Kosova-sot.info" has published an old article (2016) to which it has given an inadequate title and photo, claiming to present it as current news related to Kosovo.
Through this post, the media outlet in question appears to have linked this old news item to the current context of developments, such as the teachers' strikes in Kosovo.
Hibrid.info has addressed the article of the British media BBC, which has been re-published translated by “Kosova-sot.info”. The BBC article was published in 2016 and recounts an unusual event in Uzbekistan, the making of monthly payments to teachers there in chickens and ducks. However, the 2016 event in Uzbekistan, as far as can be understood from the BBC article, is not related to any teachers' strike, as claimed in the description of the “Kosova-sot.info” article.
Details from the article published on the BBC:
Authorities in Nukus, in the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan in Uzbekistan, have been distributing newborn chicks due to a lack of money in the country’s banks, the US-backed Radio Ozodlik reports. One teacher described the decision as “shameful,” telling the radio station: “Last year they paid us in potatoes, carrots and pumpkins. This year they are forcing us to take newborn chicks instead of our salaries. If we need chicks, we can buy them from a market at a much cheaper price.”
The word strike was included in the title only in the post by “Kosova-sot.info”, as an attempt to contextualize it with the recent strike in Kosovo. The author of this post has also contextualized it with other details, such as the photograph showing images of two school diaries with the caption in Albanian “Ditari i Klasës”.
Analyze:
The portal "Kosova-sot.info" has published an old article from 2016 taken from the "BBC", in which it writes that in a city in Uzbekistan, teachers were paid with chickens and not with cash due to a lack of money in the country's banks.
However, this aforementioned portal does not indicate in which country this event took place in the description of this article, while the posted photograph also shows school diaries with the words "Class diary" written in Albanian.
This online medium is a portal that operates in Kosovo and that has a dominant number of readers from Kosovo, based on the page's followers on Facebook. Therefore, not providing information about the location of the event can very easily misinform readers, making them think that a news story is about some development in Kosovo.
Based on the working methodology, hibrid.info evaluates this article as "clickbait".
Reasoning:
The “Clickbait” rating is given to texts whose titles have no basis in the content of the following text. Such texts and articles aim to attract the attention of the reader or even the consumer with a sensational title by promising content that does not actually exist and are created mainly out of financial interest, that is, due to increased readability. So, this type of text is intended only to click, which can be converted into a profit for the content producer.