Several Albanian-language news portals on their official Facebook pages published on September 30 and October 1 a photo of Ismail Morina "Ballisti", a fan of the Albanian national football team, who is seen together with a member of the Kosovo Police (KP).
The Facebook pages "Jepi Zë", "Monitor.mk" and "Politiko" have captioned this image. "Photo News: Ballist Morina rides around the north, is photographed with a policeman", "Photo/ Ballist Morina is seen in the north of Kosovo!" and "Ballist Morina gives it a spin in northern Kosovo."
After fact-checking conducted by hibrid.info, it has been confirmed that the photo was not taken in September of this year, but in July.
Links to the post published on Facebook by the pages "Jepi Zë", "Monitor.mk" and "Politiko":
On his Facebook page, "Ismail Morina - Ballisti", he published this photo on September 30, but he did not emphasize that the image is current. (see here)
Hibrid.info, after conducting research through online search engines, has not been able to find the same photo. However, on the official profiles of Ismail Morina "Ballisti" on Instagram and Facebook, another photo of the same moment, taken from a different angle with the same member of the Kosovo Police, was found. (see here and here)
In the comparison made between these two photographs, it is clearly seen that both were taken on the same day. (see comparison below)
So, the aforementioned sites seem to have fallen prey to this photo published by "Ballasti", which they claimed to present as current.
Analyze:
Several portals on their Facebook pages have published an old photo (July 2023) of "Ballist" with a member of the Kosovo Police, which they have presented as current with the claim that it was taken after the recent events in northern Kosovo.
Based on its work methodology, hibrid.info assesses these posts as "Unverified Content".
Reasoning:
The “Unverified” rating is given to those media reports that do not provide sufficient information to confirm the claims made in the report, and which have not been able to confirm the same due to the lack or non-possession of reliable sources.