Electronic Sites Confuse Old Picture With New Piece of News: Salameh Hammad Did Not Congratulate Faisal Al Fayez With "Military Salute"

  • 2015-10-26
  • 12

Monday, 26 October 2015

AKEED

After a royal decree was issued on 25 October 2015 appointing Faisal Al Fayez as president of the Senate, several electronic sites published a news report that speaks about Al Fayez receiving congratulators.  Other electronic sites published a report on the same subject, but they added a picture and said that Interior Minister Salameh Hammad had given Al Fayez a military salute. The headlines were as follows:

The Jordanian Media Credibility Monitor (AKEED) went back to the date of the published picture, in which the interior minister appears while saluting Faisal Al Fayez. It turned out that the picture was old and was taken by photojournalist Faris Khalifeh, who explained, in a telephone call with him, that "the picture was taken during the celebrations of the last Independence Day."

Khalifeh said that "the original picture is on my Facebook page as part of a collection of pictures at the house of former Deputy Sharaf Al Hayajneh where Faisal Al Fayez, Salameh Hammad, and other personalities were present."

The Jordanian Media Credibility Monitor (AKEED) is of the opinion that using these pictures in this manner and in a context other than the one in which they were taken and their real date harms the standard of clarity. This is through the use of archival pictures without referring to their date or place and publishing them as recent pictures and in the context of a new piece of news.

This harms the standard of accuracy in journalistic work, which requires, in this case, making a reference to the source of the archival picture and avoiding the erroneous content that was based on it.