The Director of Culture, Youth and Sports in the municipality of Peja, Xheneta Syka, from the LDK, has posted a collage of photos on Facebook featuring judoka Majlinda Kelmendi, former President Ibrahim Rugova, and an inscription.
This inscription, according to Syka, purports to present Majlinda Kelmendi's political support for the Democratic League of Kosovo.
However, the same post appears to have been removed by Syka, following the reaction it sparked in the media and from Kosovo's judo coach and selector, Driton Kuka.
Despite this, this post has been saved by the indeksonline.net portal.
It is not clear what this director of the Peja municipality was based on when she posted such a claim about Majlinda Kelmendi's alleged political leanings.
Majlinda's coach, Driton Kuka, has also reacted against this claim, saying in a Facebook post:
As can be seen, Kukë's response does not have any clear address to any individual. Also, the content of the response of the Kosovo judo selector refutes a false claim of political involvement of judoka Kelmendi, which is not the case with the content of Syka's post.
However, local media have linked Kukë's reaction to Syka's post:
https://indeksonline.net/drejtoresha-shperndane-fake-news-per-majlinda-kelmendin-reagon-toni-kuka/
Analyze:
The post of the director of the Municipality of Peja, Xhenet Syka, using the photo of judoka Majlinda Kelmendi and the caption about political bias, hints to the reader that the latter has openly shown her political preferences. In fact, this claim presented by Syka is not based on any data that supports it. Also, as can be seen from the reaction of coach Driton Kuka, it hints that the claim about political bias of judoka Kelmendi is untrue. Based on these facts, although not entirely complete, hibrid.info has assessed this claim of Xhenet Syka as "Disinformation" and "Manipulation of facts".
Reasoning:
A “Disinformation” rating is given to media reporting that contains a “mix” of inaccurate sources or even half-truthful content. This rating will also address reports that have incorrect attributions or headlines that do not reflect the text in terms of information accuracy.
The evaluation as "Manipulation of facts" is given to those media reports that use facts known to be correct, but interpret them in a distorted way. These reports typically use inaccurate information to draw inaccurate conclusions or claims, thereby misdirecting consumers' conclusions of media content in relation to the actual meaning of the facts presented.