No, this photo does not show a foreign newspaper calling Indonesian president Joko Widodo “a liar”
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on March 29, 2019 at 08:30
- 2 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
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The photo was shared here in a Facebook post in a group with more than 100,000 members on March 22, 2019 and has been shared more than 400 times.
The misleading post’s caption translates to English as: “Hooray…. Finally, a foreign newspaper reports ‘Jokowi as a liar’... That’s savage. I don’t know if Jokowi’s supporters would dare to comment on this.”
‘Jokowi’ refers to Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s popular nickname. Widodo is running for reelection in April elections against challenger Prabowo Subianto. Here is an AFP story about the upcoming polls.
Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:
The image shows the front page of a newspaper with the title “Independent Observer”.
The text below the newspaper’s name reads: “Jakarta - Indonesia”.
The front page headline states; “Jokowi’s broken political promises leave Indonesia in limbo”.
The claim that the photo shows a foreign newspaper is false; the Independent Observer describes itself as, and is registered in an official government database as, an Indonesian newspaper.
On the paper's Facebook page, which can be seen here, the Independent Observer describes itself as: "Indonesian weekly newspaper that covers general interest topic with a particular emphasis on Indonesian politic & culture."
The same front page story as appears in the image in the misleading post was published on its website here on August 10, 2018.
Below is a screenshot of the online report:
The headline in the online report and the newspaper’s logo are the same as that in the front page story in the misleading post.
According to the official records for the Independent Observer on this page for the government-run Indonesian Science Institute (LIPI), which keeps an official database of Indonesian publications, the paper is Indonesian.
The LIPI page states the Independent Observer is a “national newspaper that uses English language” that is based in Cibinong, a town near Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta.
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