FALSE: This post greatly exaggerates the number of views a speech by President Magufuli achieved
The post claims that Magufuli’s speech at the dissolution of Parliament got 600 million views, but there is no evidence of this
A Facebook post claiming that more than 600 million viewers worldwide followed a speech made by Tanzanian President John Magufuli in Parliament is FALSE.
President Magufuli gave the speech during the dissolution of the 11th Parliament on June 16, in Dodoma.
According to the post, a YouTube announcement highlighted the fact that 50 presidents and people from 80 nations followed the president’s speech online. The post claims that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, China’s President Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump of the United States watched the speech.
The post also claims that a Thai website has named Magufuli the best president in the 21st century, and that The Economist had named him a genius at development and problem-solving, but no such statements or announcements exist.
The State House Tanzania YouTube channel, which live-streamed the video, had about 39,729 views by June 19. Bunge TV, which broadcasts from Tanzania’s Parliament, also streamed the video and had about 4,456 views by the same date. A search of all channels that live-streamed the June 16 speech has not reached one million views cumulatively.
There is no announcement regarding the president’s speech on any of YouTube’s official platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Google search results show no reports from YouTube about such news.
PesaCheck has investigated a Facebook post claiming YouTube announced that more than 600 million people all over the world watched President Magufuli’s speech during the last session of Parliament and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organizations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker Najma Juma and edited by PesaCheck Deputy Editor Rose Lukalo.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organizations.
