Golden rule of reporting: Always check the facts 

US President Donald Trump has threatened legal action against the BBC, the UK public broadcaster, for its editing of a speech he made in 2021 on the day his supporters overran the Capitol.

On Monday (10 November), the BBC admitted that this was an "error of judgement".

In the letter sent on Sunday and seen by Reuters, the president's lawyers said the BBC must retract its documentary by Friday or face a lawsuit for "no less" than $1 billion. 

The huge row has led to the departure of the BBC’s director general but it has, once again, put the spotlight firmly back on the thorny issue of disinformation and so-called “fake news.”

This is a relatively recent phenomenon, thrust into the media spotlight particularly during the bitter conflict, still going, in Ukraine with the Russian president sometimes accused of disseminating "fake news" to suit his own ends.

In Brussels,the European Commission has even moved to produce a pamphlet called "Fake Off", aimed at young people, which states that "it is important to recognize how the real fake news look like, faced or confronted by children and young people on an everyday basis."

In actual fact, examples of fake news can be traced to ancient Rome (Yes, "fake news" existed back then used for political propaganda by figures like Octavian  to discredit opponents like Mark Antony  through messages on coins, pamphlets, and speeches), the American civil war and even a 1938 radio broadcast.

In other words, it is not as new as some might think.

But, as well as Ukraine, the issue of fake/distorted news also embraces the current bitter civil war in Sudan where even accurate figures about the death toll are hard to come by.

But whether 20,000, up to 150,000 or even 200,000 people have been killed since the start of the conflict in April 2023, it seems clear that atrocities, including mass rape, have been committed on a huge scale.Social media is awash with content purporting to show evidence of these atrocities.

Volker Perthes, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Sudan from 2021-2023, was recently reported by DW as saying, “This war is also very much taking place on social media, where disinformation is being spread in the wildest forms.”

One example, currently, are recent postings on social media of seeming mass graves in the tragic, war torn country.Social media users shared a screenshot from Google Earth allegedly showing mass killings in Sudan. The image went viral, with over 15 million views to date. However, France 24, a major player in the European broadcast world, ran an item on its website which appeared to question the validity of the images.

The report on France 24 on 6 November, in an episode of the TV channel’s “Truth or Fake” series, said, “Following reported mass killings at the end of October by Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the besieged city of El-Fasher, internet users shared a screenshot from Google Earth purporting to show the site of a massacre. But according to satellite image analysts, this image is dated and in fact depicts livestock.”

The France 24 report explained that this image had received “extremely viral” coverage.The broadcaster said that the image shows Kumia, a town located 300 kilometres south of El-Fasher. 

It said that Kumia as a location was, as stated on the image, authentic and real but that the issue in question was the date it was taken and, on this, France 24, said the same images can be dated to last year, specifically 16 March 2024.

The date of the image, it said, therefore does not appear to coincide with recent events related to the capture of the city by rebel forces. It also suggested the image “was out of context.”

Benjamin Strick from the Centre for Information Resilience, CIR, appeared on the same programme and told France 24 he thought the images shows “livestock and a watering hole.”

“This is a concentration of livestock,” he said.

The image, he said, does show Kumia but its date does not seem to coincide with recent events related to the capture of the city, he argued.

He told France 24 that, “Out of all of the things that were to have come out about Sudan over the past two weeks, this, in my opinion, had almost the most views. For me this is a big concern because it means people can  say well maybe it is fake, the other footage of humanitarian rights abuses, and maybe the footage of genocide is not real when it is”

One independent Brussels based media expert said, “Something going viral online should not necessarily cloud your views.”

And this is exactly why it is important to fact check and get the facts right because failure to do so may then dilute what is important and what is true if people take things the wrong way.

This obviously applies to everything, be it reporting from a hell hole of a place like Sudan, where so many innocent people are dying and suffering, to an alleged altered speech about the president of the United States by one of the world’s most respected broadcasters (BBC) which itself has in recent years decided that the challenge is so serious nowadays that it had to set up its own, dedicated “BBC Verify” platform.

At the same time, of course, it must be stressed that there are satellite images that suggest atrocities have been, and continue, to take place in Sudan. All agree that this is undoubtedly unquestioned.

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab has been monitoring the ongoing conflict in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, Sudan.The lab has also conducted research in recent years about Russia’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children

Since the fighting resumed in April 2023, over 13 million people have been displaced, marking the largest displacement crisis globally. The region faces significant humanitarian challenges, including famine, disease outbreaks, and severe food shortages. Concerns have emerged about the potential for a repeat of the Darfur genocide, prompting international and humanitarian responses.

The Yale lab, led by Nathaniel Raymond and Kaveh Khoshnood, has provided data and analysis through satellite imagery and open-source information to inform international actions. This work has supported measures such as the U.N. Security Council’s Resolution 2736, which called for a ceasefire to facilitate humanitarian aid. 

The lab’s satellite and open-source data analysis corroborates reports of killings across civilian neighbourhoods, multiple hospital sites and along the borders of the city of those attempting to flee. the American civil war and a 1938 radio broadcast.

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