Original title: Young girl from Skopje with disability: I get on the bus and they lie to me about the next station
On 29 May an article which is a speculation was published on the portal Balkan.mk. The speculation is contained in the very headline.
The article was deleted later. The information was published by other media as well.
Link to the article: Балкан.мк
Other portals that have published the article: media
This case is a classic speculation whose aim is to cause emotional response by the readers, thereby spreading the article among the public more quickly. Unfortunately, this is false information. The girl which is the target of this speculation has denied it with a post on her private Facebook profile.
This is her integral post: “I FEEL AN OBLIGATION TO address you in regards to the published article. The portal Balkan.mk has published a sentence about me which was never said by me. Firstly, I have never given an official statement for that portal. The text has been taken over from my interview given for Telma, where, among other things, I state that the audio signals in the JSP buses are not synchronized and that there has been a case when they wrongly informed about the next station. Nowhere in the interview do I say that people have lied to me, as the headline of this article alludes. Out of respect for all of you who have shared this article with the best of intention, I had to publicly deny this fake news.”
The media must report professionally, in accordance with journalist principles. The public must not be a target to speculative narratives and false informing. The media must respect the rights of the citizens, they have to be ethical and to defend human rights and dignity.
