The Star is now fact-checking Facebook posts on Deputy President William Ruto? Has Lion Place now assumed the role of cleaning up the DP’s image on social media?
In a story titled, “June Ruto’s photo taken in Poland, not at UN headquarters” the Star in a column dubbed Fact Checker by “Pesa Check” on February 21 ran this story to correct what it said was a FALSE (uppercase theirs, not ours) portrayal of the Deputy President’s daughter.
Apparently, somebody photo-shopped a photo of Ms Ruto, Kenya’s Charge d’Affaires in Warsaw, during an official function with Defence Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma in February 2019 and pasted it alongside that of her father at his Karen home in 2020, where he handed over wheelbarrows, carts and water tanks.
The Facebook post calls out the Deputy President’s supporters for being hoodwinked by the hustler narrative, the Star noted. A caption of the post says that while Ruto’s daughter is enjoying plum privileges as ambassador to Poland and attending summits overseas, “wewe na degree yako unapewa wheelbarrow na rake ukiwa hustler nation – mjinga ni nani?”
The Star dedicated space to issue a correction. One, that June is not an ambassador; that her position in Poland means that she represents Kenya in the absence of the ambassador.
Well, yes, that’s the meaning of Charge d’Affaires.
Two, the paper stated for the avoidance of doubt that they’ve looked into “the image claiming to show Ruto’s daughter, June, attending a summit at the UN in Washington, DC, and find it to be FALSE.”
The Star screamed that “FALSE” in uppercase, for the second time in the story.
And we ask: why does a random Facebook post warrant correction in a national newspaper? Why is the Star doing PR rebuttals for the Deputy President – and in a starkly slanted manner?
Or might this have something to do with who owns the Radio Africa brand?
