Telegraph’s Disinformation Aims Spreading Discord in Ethiopia

October 21, 2021

BY HAILE DEMEKE

ADDIS ABABA- The Telegraph’s recent disinformation about Ethiopia is an intentional move to spread discord in Ethiopia and to meet special interest groups’ hidden agenda of dismantling the country, so stated an expert.

Following the conflict in the northern part of the country, some of the international media including the Telegraph have continued spreading fake information against the code of ethics and principles of journalism and media organizations.

 By the same token, those international media deliberately skip the inhumane acts of the TPLF terrorist group, this has clearly indicated their bias and hidden agenda of prolonging the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia, said Muluken Asegidom (PhD) Media and Communications Lecturer at Bahir Dar University.

Recently most of the western media houses have kept silent while the TPLF terrorist group committed worst atrocities against innocent civilians at Chifera, Wuchale and in other parts of Afar and Amhara states.

 For instance, this week Aljazeera English reported fake stories about Ethiopia using bogus images, which has been used by the AFP for another news story in 28th June, 2021. This approach has exposed the clear biased stance of the media houses, he says.

Reporting the balanced, neutral, verified stories and checking the verification is the minimum principles of any media house no matter how different their views are. Neutrality and fact checking is the minimum basis of any media organizations. The recent report of some international media on Ethiopia clearly justified that they are breaching the media law and campaigning against Ethiopia, he indicated.

Some of them have been extensively engaged in reporting fake stories and their attempt to portray the current situation of the country in a negative light like Amnesty International’s fake Axum Massacre report, used photo of AFP for other purposes, mass arrest and detentions of ethnic Tigrayans, and others.

Such a deliberate disinformation campaign by some international media violates ethical conduct and put the impartiality and objectivity of the organizations in serious question.

On the other hand, the Telegraph also did the same thing this week and continued misinforming the global community regarding Ethiopia. In its latest article titled “Ethiopian PM threatens to stop food aid entering the country,” author Will Brown blatantly misquoted Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) of Ethiopia to bolster a preordained narrative in which Ethiopia must be vilified.

What the Telegraph has done in this article goes beyond taking things out of context misinterpreting the PM words. This is an unscrupulous disregard for what was said and a complete twisting of the facts for agenda based reporting. For the sake of journalism and factual reporting, the telegraph should reevaluate this report for its merit and ask if it meets journalistic standards.

The Ethiopian Herald October 21/2021