In Ethiopia, fact-checking can be a matter of life and death

Nieman Lab reports that in Ethiopia, fact-checking has become a matter of life and death, as fresh clashes in the north revive fears of the information vacuum that defined the country's 2020-to-2022 Tigray war. During that conflict, which killed hundreds of thousands, internet and phone lines were cut and false images circulated unchecked, and Rehobot Ayalew, then lead fact-checker at the group HaqCheck, estimated she was one of fewer than ten full-time practitioners in a nation of over one hundred thirty million. She described how a single false rumor of a rebel advance emptied an entire community for months, and recounted a university professor killed outside his home after Facebook posts falsely painted his ethnicity as political allegiance. According to Nieman Lab, the Committee to Protect Journalists now ranks Ethiopia among Africa's worst jailers of journalists, with independent reporting increasingly treated as a criminal act rather than a public service.

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