| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Africa Subsaharan | |
| Media group debunks killings by Boko Haram | |
| 2014-07-05 | |
| [THENEWSNIGERIA.NG] An organization focused on fact-checking in Africa today warned media organizations on the danger of exaggerating the harm done by forces of Evil in Nigeria's northern region. The concern follows the circulation of a "faked photo of a Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... massacre" of 375 people in a Nigerian Christian community, circulating on twitter and Facebook platforms. Peter Cunliffe-Jones director of Africa Check' said the photograph has been found to be fake. "We quickly discovered that the picture was all too horribly genuine. But while it does depict a real event, it is not evidence of a massacre or, for that matter, the massacre of 375 Christians. Rather it shows the aftermath of a fuel tanker kaboom nearly 2000 kilometres from Nigeria in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... "The tragedy, which occurred exactly four years ago today, killed at least 230 people and injured 190. The fuel tanker apparently overturned while trying to overtake a bus. By-standers were attempting to collect leaking fuel from the truck when the fuel ignited, possibly as the result of a lit cigarette. Many of the dead had gathered nearby to watch a World Cup soccer match." The fact-checking was done by Kate Wilkinson and Julian Rademeyer. The duo were able to accomplish this using Google tools. "So how do you tell fact from fiction? Fortunately a number of online tools exist to help you spot fakes and hoaxes online. By uploading the image to Google's image search function and sifting through the results we managed to narrow the hunt down", they reported.
| |
| Posted by:Fred |