On Thursday, October 12, DW Africa, an auxiliary of the German news organization Deutsche Welle, posted on to its Facebook page claiming that incumbent President George Weah was leading the election due to preliminary results announced by the National Elections Commission.
DW Africa posted: “Early tallying in the Liberian election shows incumbent president George Weah taking the lead…”
The Facebook post later disappeared or was deleted but a screenshot of it began making rounds on Facebook with supporters of President Weah re-posting the screenshot.
Amongst those sharing the screenshots were Mr. Isaac Doe, Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Youth and Sports Deputy Minister. Doe posted the screenshot on his official Facebook page which attracted 22 reactions, 39 comments and 4 shares.
Journalist Abu Sherif of Freedom FM also shared the screenshot on his official Facebook page. The post received 22 reactions, 55 comments and two shares.
While the screenshot of the deleted post was being shared by supporters of President Weah, supporters of the opposition Unity Party of Mr. Boakai claimed that they had written DW Africa, informing them that the information in the post was misleading.
Daniel o. Sando, a supporter of the Unity Party, claimed that they informed DW Africa about the misleading post.
LVL Fact Checking Desk reviewed the screenshot and found the text in it to be contrary to the early results announced by NEC on Wednesday, October 11. The result shows that former vice president Joseph Boakai was ahead of Mr. Weah.
We then contacted DW Africa to verify if they made the Facebook and then deleted it. They responding:
“Thank you very much for your message and your interest in Deutsche Welle. There was a correction of the article about Liberia. Please see this: https://www.facebook.com/
DW later shared a new post with a disclaimer about the deleted post.
“This is an edited report to correct an earlier post that placed George Weah in the lead, based on provisional results. Our sincere apologies,” the disclaimer reads.
In the new post, DW Africa reported that Mr. Boakai was in the lead based on early tallying.
The edited post reads: “Provisional results in the Liberian election show former Vice-President Joseph Boakai taking the lead.”
We conclude that the deleted post was made by DW Africa but is being used by supporter of Mr. Weah to spread disinformation about the elections results.
Editor’s Note: This report was edited after we received response from DW
Local Voices Liberia, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme, has implemented the iVerify Liberia system with the objective of strengthening capacities to address threats to information integrity, especially in view of the upcoming 2023 elections, to ensure all Liberian citizens have access to credible, reliable and verified information, everywhere and at all times.
This initiative is funded by Irish Aid, Embassy of Sweden in Monrovia, European Union Delegation in Liberia and the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund. The donors have no say in the production of this fact check report.
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