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Recapping The Ethiopian Herald Landmarks in Unmasking Fake News

September 11, 2021

As the largest English newspaper in the country, The Ethiopian Herald (EH) has been extensively engaged in exposing western media’s lies and their attempt to portray the current situation of the country in a negative light.

In the just concluded Ethiopian year, the EH have made remarkable tasks in proactively detecting and uncovering TPLF’s well-resourced propaganda machine disinformation campaigns and helping readers to eschew misleading contents.

Accordingly, in its March 6, 2021 edition, the daily NP presented the historian and novelist Jeff Pearce’s report that the latter successfully unmasked Amnesty International’s fake Axum Massacre report.

Likewise, on July 18, 2021, the EH exposed  Amnesty International’s claim about the mass arrest and detentions of ethnic Tigrayans in Addis Ababa is a big lie and being part of the organization’s usual smear campaign. Both reports are confirmed to be lies and fake, just targeting to accuse the reform government in a bid to advance the TPLF agenda.

It is to be recalled that Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer Amanuel Sileshi told EH that Amnesty used the photograph he did for the AFP’s coverage of Ethiopia’s 6th General Elections to accuse the Ethiopian government. Expressing his regret at witnessing Amnesty use unrelated content to falsely accuse the Ethiopian government, the photographer said that such practices violate ethical conduct and put the impartiality and objectivity of the organization in serious doubt.

By the same token, Amnesty made use of various fake sources to come up with big accusations and in February it made an unwarranted report about the federal troops committed ‘Axum Massacre’ relying on the testimonies of trained ‘witnesses’ and ‘survivors.’

The EH also poured a cold water on the unjustified allegations Al-Jazeera English made about federal troops’ sexual assault against ethnic Tigray woman named Monalisa during the law enforcement operation. To this end, the newspaper presented the account of a man who claimed to be a father of Monalisa and told the world that she was hit on 4 November 2020 during TPLF forces launched an attack against the national army.

Speaking to a YouTube-based media, Tigray Community, the said victim’s father Abrha, who lives in the U.S., stated that his daughter was being shot and wounded in early November 2020 when the criminal faction attacked federal troops stationed in the area.

Noting his communication with Monalisa was on merely via phone calls and texting for the past three months, Abrha indicated that he saw his daughter for the first time after the accident in Al-Jazeera’s manipulating program. In this regard, the EH confirmed that the young girl is used by TPLF associates to cover the faction’s crimes in the name of ‘investigative journalism’ but her father exposes BBC and AJ English’s sheer lies.

Human Rights Watch Deputy Africa Director Ida Sawyer’s tweet which claimed ‘hyenas had eaten the corpses’ on May Quho, Tigray State was also being exposed by the daily NP as a mere lie. Sawyer made the comment with a view to justifying why they had not shown a single body or burial place from the alleged ‘Axum Massacre.’

To put in the nutshell, The Ethiopian Herald has played a great role in serving a Fifth estate-fact checking instrument to provide verifiable information for the targeted audience thereby effectively combating and countering TPLF confidants’ smear campaigns in the concluded year.

The Ethiopian Herald  11  September  2021