ISLAMABAD: The hugely popular WhatsApp messaging service began a week-long publicity campaign in Pakistan Wednesday offering tips to spot fake news, days before the country holds a general election.
“Together we can fight false information,” says the full-page ad in Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English-language daily, listing ten tips on differentiating rumors from fact.
“Many messages containing hoaxes or fake news have spelling mistakes. Look for these signs so you can check if the information is accurate,” it says.
“If you read something that makes you angry or afraid, ask whether it was shared to make you feel that way. And if the answer is yes, think twice before sharing it again.”
WhatsApp also announced the implementation in the country of a new feature allowing recipients to see if a message is original or forwarded.
The company had bought full-page advertising in India on July 10 after a wave of lynchings in the country were linked to viral “fake news” spread by WhatsApp about alleged child kidnappings.
WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, had come under pressure from Indian authorities to put an end to the spread of rumors, which have caused the deaths of more than 20 people in the past two months.
Millions of people use WhatsApp in neighboring Pakistan, where rumors, false information and conspiracy theories are ubiquitous. Such messages spread quickly, with no real way for recipients to check their veracity.
Pakistan also has a history of mob violence, and videos such as the murder of Mashal Khan — a journalism student accused of blasphemy who was killed by a mob in April 2017 — circulate rapidly.
Parliamentary elections are scheduled for July 25.
WhatsApp seeks to stem fake news ahead of Pakistan election
WhatsApp seeks to stem fake news ahead of Pakistan election
- Pakistan’s leading English-language daily listed ten tips on differentiating rumors from fact
- WhatsApp had come under pressure from Indian authorities to put an end to the spread of rumors
Jailed French journalist files appeal in Algeria’s top court: lawyers
- Gleizes was arrested in May 2024 after traveling to Tizi Ouzou in northeastern Algeria’s Kabylia region — home to the Amazigh Kabyle people — to write about the country’s most decorated football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie
ALGIERS: French journalist Christophe Gleizes, sentenced to seven years behind bars in Algeria on terror-related charges, has filed an appeal seeking a new trial with the country’s highest court, his lawyers said Sunday.
“Christophe Gleizes registered an appeal at (the court of) Cassation” on Sunday, the deadline for filing, his French lawyer Emmanuel Daoud told AFP in a message, declining to comment further.
Gleizes’ Algerian lawyer Amirouche Bakouri made a similar announcement on Facebook.
Earlier this month, an Algerian appeals court upheld the seven-year prison term for the sportswriter, who was first convicted of “glorifying terrorism” in June.
Gleizes was arrested in May 2024 after traveling to Tizi Ouzou in northeastern Algeria’s Kabylia region — home to the Amazigh Kabyle people — to write about the country’s most decorated football club, Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie.
In 2021, he had met in Paris with the head of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylie (MAK), a foreign-based group designated a terrorist organization by Algiers earlier that year.
At this month’s appeal hearing, Gleizes had said he did not know the MAK had been listed as a terrorist organization, and asked the court’s forgiveness for his “journalistic mistakes.”
The court’s decision to uphold his sentence was denounced by the rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF), as well as the French government.
Gleizes’s jailing comes at a time of diplomatic friction between Paris and Algiers that began last year when France officially backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region, where Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front.
He is currently France’s only journalist imprisoned abroad, according to RSF, and French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to work toward his release.
Mother makes plea
The mother of the jailed journalist Christophe Gleizes wrote a letter to Algeria’s president requesting he pardon her son from his seven-year sentence on terror-related charges.
“I respectfully ask you to consider granting Christophe a pardon, so that he may regain his freedom and his family,” Sylvie Godard wrote in the letter, which was dated December 10 and seen by AFP on Monday.
“Nowhere in any of his writings will you find any trace of statements hostile to Algeria and its people,” she wrote in her letter to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
