Claim: An X user, Samuel Anyidoho, posted a flier purportedly designed by TV3, a Ghanaian media house, indicating that the flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress, John Mahama, has promised to buy an iPhone for all Ghanian market women. He accompanied the post with a question on whether the claim is true.
Verdict: False! The flier in circulation is fake and did not emanate from TV3. The media house has since denied ever reporting or designing any flier to that effect.
Full Text:
Ghana is preparing for another crucial general election in December 2024, and as a result, campaign activities are beginning to heat up as candidates of various political parties travel around the country to meet with various interest groups.
As always, the candidates are on campaign tours making promises and pronouncements and speaking about their vision if voted into power.
One such pronouncement is a claim attributed to the flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Mahama, who is purported to have promised to buy iPhones for all market women to enable them to access the Internet and sell their goods online.
The claim was contained in a post by an X user, Samuel Koku Anyidoho, on Wednesday, June 6, 2024, as a news report from TV3. The post was accompanied by a flier with the media house’s logo(s) on it.
Samuel Koku Anyidoho, who is a former Deputy General Secretary of the NDC sought to know whether the pronouncement was indeed made by the former president and flag-bearer in his post.
The post has since gone viral, receiving 50 thousand views, 46 reposts, 35 quotes, 469 likes, and 18 bookmarks.
Verification
Samuel Anyidoho is a known politician who served as a spokesperson for the late President Atta Mills, who died in office as president of Ghana in 2012. He has since fallen out with his party, the NDC, and the flagbearer, John Mahama, who served as Atta Mills’ Vice President when Koku was in office.
It is, therefore, important to verify the post’s authenticity to ensure that followers are not misled.
To verify the flier, the researcher first did a visual analysis, comparing it with other fliers previously designed by TV3. This analysis showed several differences between the two fliers, raising doubts about text to font size and colour.
The researcher then contacted the TV3 newsroom to verify if the flier originated from them. In his response, Napo Ali Fuseini, a lead producer in the newsroom, labeled the flier as “fake” and indicated that his company was working on flagging it as fake.
Despite the denial from TV3, the researcher contacted the office of the NDC flagbearer for a comment on the claim. But calls and WhatsApp messages to spokesperson/special aide to the former president, Joyce Mogtari Bawa, and a member of his campaign team, Beatrice Anan Esq, went unanswered.
Conclusion
TV3’s denial and the clear differences observed between the flyers designed by TV3 and the one posted by Koku Anyidoho show that the flier in circulation is fake.
The researcher produced this fact-check under the DUBAWA 2024 Kwame KariKari Fellowship, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.
Source: Kasapafmonline.com/Feisal Abdul Iddrisu