To: The Press Council
From: United from Animals and Animal Rights Foundation (NGOs)
Concern: Biased news, unprofessional and with the aim of promoting panic to the public by Gazeta Express
Subject: Gazeta Express – aroused fear and hatred towards stray dogs
APPEAL
On 09.01.2019, Gazeta Express has published a so-called news story on its site. The published news contains erroneous information aimed at promoting public panic. Moreover, the so-called news does not meet the minimum requirements of journalistic professionalism:
“Citizens of the neighborhood “Dardania” in dangour from stray dogs.” In the Dardania neighborhood, as in all other neighborhoods in Prishtina, there are stray dogs. Stray dogs in big cities have gone through the sterilisation and treatment process. This means that the agressive dogs has been identified and some of them are euthanized. Stray dogs with eartagss on the streets of big the cities are sterilized and vaccinated against any diseases. This means that the central level and individual municipalities are engaged in long-term treatment of stray dogs in the country. This means that this part of the citation of the attacked citizen: “The municipality is in deep sleep as far as the issue of stray dogs is concerned, no measures are taken and day by day many people are attacking citizens” is not balanced with factual data. As such, the Express newspaper has failed to fulfill its role in reporting the truth to the public, using a quote to put forward the media’s outlook.
On the other hand, Gazeta Express uses the citation of the attacked citizen, as well as another citizen to present a final opinion of the citizens endangour. Quotations of the Vox Populi type do not constitute a factual basis for assessing a situation, and in global media are generally considered journalistic tools to color a news rather than defining the factual basis. Therefore, the so-called news from Gazeta Express can be interpreted as an incitement to hate and public panic, and not a true story and a passage of truth.
In fact, in Kosovo, there are no official statistics on the number of stray animal attacks. Evidence for internal purposes by civil society organizations and the state shows that as a percentage of the population, stray animals from Kosovo are much smaller than in Western countries.
As a result of the so-called news like of Gazeta Express, we have seen continuous attempts of citizen vigilantism that breaks the feet of dogs, beat them, and in other ways exert violence on them. As a result of this vigilantism, activists together with donors and the state ourselves are forced to bear the cost of care for them.
This information is extremely ungrounded. Apart from being a substantive opinion of the writer of this “news”, it is also wrong. Dogs in the Dardania neighborhood are regular and the same place constantly. This is because the citizens and their children feed, play with them and care for them on a regular basis.
As a result, we ask GazetaExpress to issue an immediate pardon for disseminating false news with panic initiation tendencies and to correct the news in question with exact information and data.
Sincerely,
United for Animals Organisation
Animal Rights Foundation