On September 13, 2023, the US-based Ethio 360 produced a 2:38:33 long program called “Zare Min Ale”, which was first shared on YouTube and later posted on Facebook platforms. After finding factual errors in the program, the two platforms have taken down the program. If one follows the link to the YouTube video, the answer will be: “This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.” Facebook went a bit further in verifying the content before taking it down from its platform. It stated that the content carried “[partly] false information” and its “[independent] fact-checkers say this information has some factual inaccuracies.” For these “independent fact-checkers”, Facebook left two links – one in Ukrainian and the other in Turkish – which do not give further clarification on which content of the program had factual inaccuracies and which had not.
Yet the program has been still active on social media platforms, e.g., Wollo Mizan (with 363K views) and individual accounts – one being on the twitter account of the program producer, Habtamu Ayalewu (with more than 35.2K views).
Therefore, judging from the content (which narrates about the “Amhara holocaust and genocide” conducted by the “Oromo-led government”) and the context (its audiences being people in Ethiopia and in the diaspora) of the program, the MFC took the initiative to go a bit deeper to look at what content of the program makes it ‘partly false information’ as Facebook had established.
- The program producers used a voice cloning tool that depicts a news reader storytelling how the “Oromo-led government of Abiy is conducting holocaust and genocide against the Amhara people” (listen from 1:15:12 – 1:16:26 on this link). MFC judges the usage of such tool has the potential to deceive audience/followers so that they believe the news readers, who were depicted as English-speaking foreigners, are real persons working in media corporation.
- The other is the usage of wrong picture in the video that depicted bruised legs (see the middle picture below or watch it from this link @ 1:15:58). This picture depicts two Oromo women heavily bruised in the hand of Ethiopian government forces, according to Bultum Broadcasting services (BBS). Although it might be difficult to establish if these two women were Oromos or not, and if they were at all “tortured” by security forces or not, using a picture from 2020 as if the “torture” happened in 2023 misleads people (see BBS shared picture above).
Thus, based on voice cloning and using wrong pictures, MFC verdicts the stated content as misleading.
