The newspaper Southern Times is warning its readers to avoid Kenyans at all costs, because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
What looks like a front page of the Southern Times newspaper is circulating on Facebook and WhatsApp in Kenya. The headline reads: “Avoid Kenyans at all costs.”, Text below the headline refers to the Covid-19 outbreak in Kenya: “Wit rising COVID-19 cases and individuals who avoid to self quarantine despite massive travels, Could Kenya become the ‘Italy of Africa’ pretty soon?” The front page photo shows Kenya Airways aircraft., Italy has long had the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in Europe, although Spain now has the most cases on that continent., The Southern Times is headquartered in Windhoek, Namibia, with an office in Harare, Zimbabwe. It calls itself “the newspaper for southern Africa” and is distributed throughout the region., The spelling mistakes and casual language in the front page circulating online are signs that it may have been manipulated., But did the newspaper publish this anxiety-inducing headline? We investigated., Africa Check searched for the headline and subhead online, but could not find it on the Southern Times website or anywhere else., We then searched for the other headlines on the front page, to see if they were linked to real, published stories., One of the headlines was “Lesotho lowers SADC flag”. The full headline of the story, which was published in the Southern Times on 26 November 2018, was “Lesotho lowers SADC flag as SAPMIL ends intervention mission”., This tipped us off that the possibly manipulated front page may have been published around 26 November. A review of all the front pages posted on the Southern Times Facebook page in November 2018 revealed that the original cover of the weekly for 23 to 29 November appeared on 26 November., Its headline is\xa0 “Stina Wu, Entrepreneur or Rent-seeker?” – not “Avoid Kenyans at all costs.”, The original front page photo shows Chinese-born entrepreneur Stina Wu, who was the subject of an in-depth profile in the newspaper., We also found that the photo of the Kenya Airways planes has been regularly used in Kenya and is attributed to Thomas Mukoya, a photojournalist from Reuters., Africa Check emailed the editor of the Southern Times, Innocent Gore, about the fake front page. He was outraged., “Thank you for bringing this issue to my attention,” he said. “I am actually shocked by this obviously photoshopped job which is malicious and is meant to tarnish our image.”, Gore said the newspaper had nothing against Kenyans. “Obviously someone is trying to tarnish the image of our newspaper by abusing our masthead and publishing malicious content. The Southern Times has nothing against Kenyans and would never publish such content. We were founded on pan-African values, solidarity, unity, and togetherness, and will never deviate from these.”, The newspaper also published a statement on its website, distancing itself from the manipulated front page. – Vincent Ng’ethe, , "A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”. What should you do? First, dont delete!", Click on our guide for the steps you should follow., Publishers guide, Africa Check is a partner in Facebook’s third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media., The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it., You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how., Africa Check is working with the CoronaVirusFacts/DatosCoronaVirus Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 fact-checkers fighting misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic., Learn more about the alliance here., , © Copyright Africa Check 2020. Read our republishing guidelines.\xa0You may reproduce this piece or content from it for the purpose of reporting and/or discussing news and current events. This is subject to: Crediting Africa Check in the byline, keeping all hyperlinks to the sources used and adding this sentence at the end of your publication: “This report was written by Africa Check, a non-partisan fact-checking organisation. View the original piece on their website", with a link back to this page., We depend on voluntary donations to run this site. Please help us to keep public figures accountable by supporting the project., Find out more, For democracy to function, public figures need to be held to account for what they say. The claims they make need to be checked, openly and impartially. Africa Check is an independent, non-partisan organisation which assesses claims made in the public arena using journalistic skills and evidence drawn from the latest online tools, readers, public sources and experts, sorting fact from fiction and publishing the results., , Get a weekly dose of facts, straight to your inbox.
‘Avoid Kenyans’ because of coronavirus? No, southern African newspaper headline photoshopped | Africa Check