How Fake News Spreads: Mainstream Media Republish Suspect Sites’ Stories

The website, whose ownership is unclear and editors unnamed, said that congresswoman Johnson has been "a Bosnian lobbyist belonging to the Congressional Caucus on Bosnia for many years" and was "well rewarded" for the Srebrenica resolution initiative "by the Bosniak American Advisory Council in Washington", a lobbying group. 

In the same article, the website also mentioned Donald Trump's rival candidate at the upcoming US presidential elections, Joe Biden, who once promised he would "continue to demand that justice is done for the victims in Srebrenica" and said that "all those who carried out war crimes in Bosnia must be held accountable".

"To deny these crimes is a moral offence that insults our highest values and demeans the gravity of what took place," Biden wrote. The site described Johnson's resolution as "an attack on Serbs", but also as a support for Biden, who it alleged was "known for his anti-Serb stance". 

"That is why our source in the US claims that all Serbs will give their votes to Donald Trump at the upcoming presidential elections in the USA and will submit a request to the American Congress to remove Ms Eddie Bernice Johnson's resolution from the [legislative] procedure," InfoSrpska wrote. 

Information from the InfoSrpska article was quickly republished by Republika Srpska's official news agency SRNA and public broadcaster Radio-Television Republika Srpska, RTRS, without being changed much.

The fact-checking platform Raskrinkavanje has repeatedly analysed the close triangular relationship between InfoSrpska, SRNA and RTRS.

Tijana Cvjeticanin, a member of the editorial board of Raskrinkavanje, argued that "the anonymous website was created to serve as a source of disinformation and thereby clear mainstream...