A weekly roundup of bogus reports and phony facts in the mainstream and social media.
◆ Another week, another fake news item. This time it’s the case of American University in Cairo student Sarah Abou El-Khair, who suggested to NASA the idea of a barbecue under the fire of a rocket launch, in a satirical attempt to help “solve world hunger.” She then concocted an elaborate series of exchanges with NASA and rivals SpaceX, with NASA saying they were on board with the idea to the extent of getting UK chef Gordon Ramsay to supervise the giant barbie. This was the wind-up of all wind-ups — but by creating the exchanges with NASA and SpaceX, it gave it credibility and people were duped. They ran with the dubious news and re-posted it before El-Khair came clean about what she called a “social experiment.”
◆ Several international media outlets and pro-Qatari Twitter accounts have wrongfully interpreted a 2017 tweet from former Saudi Royal Court adviser Saud Al-Qahtani. The tweet was originally directed — back when it was posted — to another Twitter user, who challenged Al-Qahtani’s stance on Qatar. The Twitter user suggested that there would be reconciliation without adhering to the Anti-Terror Quartet’s demands, to which Al-Qahtani replied saying: “Do you think I make decisions without guidance? I am a employee and honest executor of the king and the crown prince.” However, Al Jazeera presenters Faisal Al-Qassem and Jalal Shada (to name a few) took the tweet out of context and retweeted it when Al-Qahtani was recently relieved of his duties during the backlash over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. The tweet had nothing to do with the incident.
◆ In another incident, it was claimed over the weekend that a 97-year-old victim of the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh was a Holocaust survivor. At 97, Rose Mallinger was the eldest of the 11 victims murdered in the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation synagogue. But even though she had lived during the time of the Holocaust, she did not in fact have to endure it. But it made for more interesting news and once it appeared on one online platform, it quickly grew legs and appeared on several other sites, causing a friend of the family to go online and ask that the posts be amended as they were not true.
