On June 14, 2024, Alternativna published a podcast with Elvira Kovač, a member of the National Parliament of Serbia from the Alliance of Vojvodina Hungarians and a member of the Serbian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

Part of the content from this podcast was also republished by our partners from Sbunker on July 26, 2024. In it, Kovač stated that the Kosovo delegation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe did not appoint a minority, i.e., a Serbian representative.

In a sharp reaction on social networks, the representative of the Kosovo delegation in the PACE, Saranda Bogujevci, called statements by Mrs. Kovač lies and her rhetoric shameful, stating that the seat reserved for the Serbian community was vacant because the representatives of this community refused to participate in the delegation. As the most shocking, Bogujevci characterized the fact that Sbunker did not contact the Kosovo delegation to confirm whether these claims were true or not. After this reaction, our partners from Sbunker removed the mentioned content from their online platforms, with an apology, stressing that the responsibility for content production on the portal rests with Alternativna.

We accept responsibility for the production of the content and apologize to the public for not providing full information or statements from both parties who have conflicting claims on this issue at the time of publishing the podcast. We are working to establish the facts and circumstances due to which the representatives of the Serbian community in Kosovo are not involved in the work of the PACE, after which, in accordance with good journalistic practices, we will inform the public about the information obtained.

Alternativna has been working for years on the development of quality and fact-based journalism in conditions of deep ethnic, political, and media polarization in Kosovo. We published dozens of articles in which we exposed fake news, misinformation, or manipulative media content in the Serbian and Albanian languages, which is why we are the target of attacks via social networks. We will continue to provide quality journalism despite the pressures to which we, like other independent media, are exposed on a daily basis.