AKEED, Anwar Ziadat

On 15 July 2017, many local news websites carried a fake story headlined "Six Arab States Request Withdrawing 2022 Tournament From Qatar."

According to the fake and fabricated story, the Swiss Gianni Infantino, president of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), was quoted as saying that "six Arab states submitted a request to FIFA, asking for withdrawing the hosting of World Cup 2022 from Qatar since it is a state that sponsors terrorism." The fabricated story, which was attributed to the Swiss website "The Local," said that "the Saudi, Yemeni, Mauritanian, UAE, Bahraini, and Egyptian associations asked FIFA to reconsider giving the organization of the tournament to Qatar."

The Jordanian Media Credibility Monitor (AKEED) tracked the news published on this issue. It turned out that most local websites ran the story as an exclusive and did not attribute it to the Swiss website "The Local," with the exception of very few sites. Some of these websites noted that they took the story from the Turkish Anadolu Agency, while others began the report with the word "monitoring."  

The website The Local released a statement, in which it denied publishing an interview with Infantino, saying: "We looked for the interview with FIFA President Infantino. After doing a search and investigating the matter from all aspects, we found out that the editorial staff did not write, publish, or remove the article." It added: "We are not to blame for this at all. Besides, the article was published on a fake website that has the same name of our original website."

The statement, which was carried by the Anadolu Agency under the headline "Swiss Website Denies Infantino Was Asked To Withdraw Hosting Tournament From Qatar," said: "It was a fake story that appeared on a site that aped The Local of Switzerland.  The sophisticated copycat site included links to genuine articles and adverts on The Local, and was designed to resemble the real site to anyone who was sent a link to the fake article."

James Savage, co-founder of the Swiss website "The Local," denied on his Twitter account that the website published such statements, saying: "The staff of the site did not publish the article and then remove it." He condemned any attempt to abuse The Local"s brand to spread disinformation.

Here, we provide the links to "The Local." The first link is to the story that the website said was fake and a copycat. The second link is to the original website, according to their homepage.

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has denied receiving any requests from the Arab states that severed relations with Qatar last month for withdrawing the hosting of World Cup 2022. A FIFA spokesman said that "the FIFA president has not received any such letter. Consequently, he has made no comments on this issue."

We have to note here that some of the countries that were mentioned in the story denied submitting a request for withdrawing the 2022 tournament from Qatar. Anwar Gargash, UAE minister of state for foreign affairs, has denied reports that his country, along with five other Arab states, had requested withdrawing the 2022 tournament from the State of Qatar against the background of the Gulf crisis. Mauritania also denied its request that World Cup 2022 be withdrawn from Qatar.

This fabricated news about six Arab states requesting withdrawing the 2022 tournament from Qatar is a clear example of fake news, which has spread across the world, from Europe and advanced nations to Third World countries, and to which local websites have fallen victim.

This story shows that the victims of fabricated news could be large international news organizations, which are considered a major source of news, such as the Turkish Anadolu Agency, which carried the fake news initially, and then published the denial without removing the fake news. Other organizations that carried the fake news include Rai al Youm and Al Jazeera.

It is noticeable that most of the websites that published the fake news did not remove it, after it was proven to be false, or publish a correction in the same place, showing that the first story was untrue. This suggests that local media outlets and some international websites try to avoid making an apology for publishing inaccurate news.

AKEED thinks that attributing news to foreign sources and media outlets does not give it full credibility. Credibility is linked to hard facts, and not to names of sources.