MAPPING GENDERED DISINFORMATION IN THE WESTERN BALKANS – MONTENEGRO

On 1 August 2024, a bout at the women’s boxing competition in the Paris Olympic Games made global headlines. In Montenegro, several media outlets, including the national public broadcasting service Radio Television of Montenegro (RTCG), reported that a “biological male” defeated an Italian female boxer. The case referred to Algerian boxer Imane Khelif who won against Italian Angela Carini. Many media outlets, both regional and international, didn’t verified information before publishing their sensational headlines and stories. Khelif is a biological woman, born as a girl. As of the time of writing this report, RTCG has not removed the article with the controversial headline, despite public criticism of such reporting that has emerged worldwide.

This is not the only incident of unethical reporting on the topic of gender and the dissemination of gender misinformation by the national public broadcasting service of Montenegro. There are numerous examples from the past five years alone, covering issues from abortion and violence against women to marriage.

They include a program by journalist Sead Sadiković about arranged marriages between Montenegrins and poor Albanian women, where their families receive money for them. The author made inappropriate jokes and presented the topic in a light tone, as if it was not about an issue involving human trafficking. In January 2022 the host of RTCG’s morning program, Jovana Božarić Stanišić, while talking to a representative of the SOS Call Centre for victims of domestic violence, stated that sometimes women themselves provoke violence from their partners because they ”won’t stop,” implying that women are to blame for the violence.

Furthermore, in 2022, RTCG produced a debate about women’s right to abortion, which Montenegrins were granted in 1974 and which has not been questioned since. RTCG invited a priest from the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), Gojko Perović, to comment on the church’s stance on this issue. Perović stated that abortion is a sin and that “not everything in a woman’s body belongs to her”. Perović and gynecologist Vojislav Šimun, who is now Minister of Health, defended the right of citizens and doctors to support the church’s stance.

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Until now, there have been no detailed studies on the topic of gender disinformation in Montenegro. Recently, the fact-checking website Raskrinkavanje started addressing the issue, but this analysis represents the first comprehensive attempt to investigate the patterns of gender disinformation in Montenegro.

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