The Information Ministry of Ghana has alleged that the opposition, National Democratic Congress (NDC) is operating fake news websites and an institutionalized group of internet trolls aimed at interfering in political opinions and decision-making.
According to the ministry, the opposition in desperation to emerge victorious at the December 7 polls has gone to the extreme to even clone the official website of Graphic Ghana just to propagate demeaning news stories and rid the ruling government of the goodwill of the citizenry.
The Deputy Minister for Information, Pius Enam Hadzide made this revelation in an interview with the Happy 98.9 FM’s Samuel Eshun, host of the Happy Morning Show.
“The NDC is operating a fake news cell and a troll factory where big wigs of the party give instructions to their people who push their agenda on social media”.
Pius furthered that the NDC has managed to clone the websites of credible new agencies to also champion their fake news agenda.
“They are a lot of these fake news websites and the NDC has even managed to clone the website of Graphic Ghana. The cloned website has the same outlook of Graphic Ghana but the difference is that the NDC’s website carries fake news only”.
Educating Ghanaians on the fake Graphic Ghana website being operated by the NDC, he said, “The original Graphic Ghana website has the url, https://www.graphic.com.gh whilst the fake news portal of the NDC has the url, https://graphicgh.com/”.
He furthered that the NDC has also imported some sophisticated artificial intelligence equipment with voice cloning abilities to aid in their fake news production.
The minister pointed to all the above as deliberate and conscious attempts by the opposition to tarnish the image of the government and asked Ghanaians to disregard such information and be particular of the news they consume.
When asked by Samuel Eshun what the government was doing to crack down these fake news portals, he revealed that most of them have been clamped down. “But the problem is, whenever you close down these fake news portals, they are resurrected and new ones are created”.
The politician was quick to add that these troll and fake news websites are against the laws of the country and warned people being used as ‘puppets’ by the opposition to desist from the act for their own well-being.
By: Joel Sanco
