Wrote: Etrit Rexhepi
An article is published claiming that Kosovo is declining in terms of media freedom, ranking 99th. This position makes Kosovo the worst of the Balkan countries.
This claim was published on Monday (December 8) by the media as "klankosova.tv","ekonomiaonline.com","gazeta10.com","news.net🇧🇷paparaci.com","gazetametro.net","democracy.com","orainfo.com","jepize.com","radiostargjilan.com” and on Facebook pages like “Signs","Yepi zü","The World Today New”And“Focus +".
What's wrong with this content?
Hibrid.info has found that the ranking of countries regarding media freedom was published earlier (May 2) by the organization "Reporters Without Borders". This ranking was published by these media outlets and websites on Monday (December 8) as current.
The articles are based on an image, published on Monday (December 8) by an Instagram account called “europe.magazine”. The image features European countries and their rankings for press freedom (see here).
The data is taken from the 2025 Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders.
The report ranking 180 countries was published on May 2 of this year by this organization (see here and here). As of May of this year, there has been no new report published. The report showed that Kosovo was ranked 99th, falling 24 positions compared to last year.
None of the articles that published the claim mention that the report with data on media freedom by "Reporters Without Borders" was published in May of this year.
Analyze:
The claim that Kosovo ranks 99th in terms of media freedom is accurate.
However, the 2025 Press Freedom Index, which ranked Kosovo in this position, was published in May of this year by Reporters Without Borders.
The data has not yet been updated, but the articles that spread the claim do not mention this fact, making the news appear current.
Based on its working methodology, hibrid.info assesses the content as "Unverified Content".
Reasoning:
The "Unverified" rating is given to those informative contents that do not provide sufficient information to confirm the claims made in the report, and which could not be verified due to certain circumstances (speed, lack of sources) during the publication of the content.