Wrote: Fatbardh Dema
"They all started badly and ended even worse. Daniel Serwer for Kosovo and Serbia" is the caption placed on a published image showing the photograph of American professor Daniel Serwer.
This image was posted today (May 11) on Facebook on the page of the television information portal "ntv.al", to which a link to an article was also attached.
What's wrong with this inscription?
After fact-checking, hibrid.info has confirmed that this caption is incorrect and does not correspond to the content.
In the content of the article, it becomes clear that the American professor, in his opinion, did not say the sentence "they started badly and ended badly" about Kosovo and Serbia, but about the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the State Department, Gabriel Escobar, and the EU Special Representative, Miroslav Lajčák.
Link to the post published on Facebook by the "Ntv Televizione" page:
After research conducted through online search engines, hibrid.info has found that the article published by "ntv.al", is taken from "gazetaexpress.com", which was later renamed.
Title of the article published on "gazetaexpress.com": Serwer: Escobar and Lajcak started badly, ended even worse, this is the path that should be followed in negotiations
To further confirm what Serwer actually said, hibrid.info has found the American professor's opinion published on his personal blog "peacefare.net". (see here)
Excerpt from Daniel Serwer's opinion piece, translated into Albanian:
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Escobar and EU Special Representative Lajcak, both with mandates for the Western Balkans for the past three years, are bidding farewell in Washington this week. They are two experienced diplomats who know the Balkans well. They have worked together without much friction. The biggest glaring issue has been American support for the “Open Balkans,” a trade facilitation scheme. Europeans rightly saw it as unnecessary and duplicative of their efforts in what is known as the “Berlin process.”
But Lajcak and Escobar failed to produce political normalization between Kosovo and Serbia, which they made their top priority.
What went wrong?
Escobar and Lajcak started badly and ended worse. They promised Belgrade that they would prioritize the creation of the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities within Kosovo. They ended up without significant progress on that misplaced priority.
Analyze:
The claim that Daniel Serwer said about Kosovo and Serbia that "they all started badly and ended badly" is not accurate.
Hibrid.info has found that the American professor expressed this opinion about Escobar and Lajcak on his personal blog.
Based on its work methodology, hibrid.info assesses this article as "Disinformation" and "Clickbait".
Reasoning:
"Disinformation" is defined as information content that contains a "mix" of inaccurate sources or even half-truthful attributes, and that is created and/or distributed with the deliberate intention of causing harm. The motive behind the producers/distributors of disinformation content lies in achieving a political, financial, psychological or social goal.
“Clickbait” is considered to be informational content whose title is general and does not disclose the location of the event, context and relevance. Such texts and articles aim to attract the attention of the audience with sensational headlines with misleading consequences, which do not accurately clarify the content of the article. “Clickbait” headlines are mainly made to attract readability in the case of media publications and/or to earn from clicks in the case of commercial publications.