A dubious portal "readkoala.com" that has informative content in Albanian, has published an article titled "Hashim Thaçi's new look SURPRISES the whole world, look how beautifully his beard grows in The Hague."
Through this article, this dubious portal has claimed to present as real an edited photograph showing former Kosovo president Hashim Thaçi with a beard.
From the fact-checking conducted by hibrid.info, it appears that the photo in this article has been edited with some application and that the former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) did not grow a beard during his stay at the Special Court in The Hague, as claimed in this article.
Although the content of this article, in the last paragraph, explains that this photo was edited through an application, the author did not clarify the same thing in the title, leaving readers to fall prey to deception.
Link to the article published on "readkoala.com":
Hibrid.info has managed to find the authentic photograph of former President Thaçi, taken during a statement to the media, at the time he was entering the building of the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor's Office, located in The Hague, Netherlands.
This photograph was published in an article by the German television station "Deutchewelle" on July 17, 2020, and bears the signature of the author A. Bajrami (©DW/A. Bajrami).
Link to the authentic article published on DW:
https://www.dw.com/en/kosovo-thaci-hague-war-crimes/a-54164748
Analyze:
The dubious portal “readkoala.com” has published this article with a false claim, based on an edited photo. Based on the fact-checking process, it turns out that the photo is an edited one that falls into the category of “deepfake”, while the content is assessed as “fake news”.
This portal posted the same article on the Facebook page "Në Kohë", which has 419 thousand followers, while the post itself has managed to collect 853 reactions, 594 comments and 27 shares. This shows that this fake news has had great reader interaction and, as a result, has influenced the wide distribution of this false claim.
Reasoning:
The "Fake News" rating is given to media reports that are entirely the product of a medium that itself contains factually incorrect claims or information.
Content that is considered fake news can be reliably determined to have been created and distributed with the intent to misinform the public, i.e., to present a claim that is completely false as fact.