Back to Africa Check

No, CNN did not tweet about impeachment of Kenyan county governor 

“Major win in Kenya’s war against corruption as the country’s most corrupt individual is impeached,” reads what seems to be a screenshot of a tweet from CNN Breaking News, posted on Facebook.

“Former Governor Ann Waiguru was accused by MCAs of inflating tenders and stealing from county coffers,” it adds. It’s posted with the comment: “Waiguru hits international headlines.”

On 9 June 2020 Kirinyaga county ward representatives passed a resolution to impeach governor Anne Waiguru for “gross misconduct and abuse of office”.

Did CNN, a US-based TV network, tweet news of her impeachment?



No record of tweet


Both the Facebook post and a URL in the screenshot are dated 8 June – the day before Waiguru was impeached. This strongly suggests the tweet is fake.

And the tweet describes her as the “former governor”, while Kenyan law says a governor’s impeachment takes effect after the senate votes on it. The senate only received the articles of impeachment on 10 June, two days after the screenshot was posted. 

Africa Check searched Google for the exact words in the screenshot, but didn’t find any matching results.

An advanced search on Twitter also returned no results. And the text, or any report on the impeachment, could not be found on the CNN website.

We also searched the CNN Breaking News Twitter account for any mention of Waiguru from 7 to 9 June, with no results. The screenshot is fake. – Dancan Bwire




 

Republish our content for free

We believe that everyone needs the facts.

You can republish the text of this article free of charge, both online and in print. However, we ask that you pay attention to these simple guidelines. In a nutshell:

1. Do not include images, as in most cases we do not own the copyright.

2. Please do not edit the article.

3. Make sure you credit "Africa Check" in the byline and don't forget to mention that the article was originally published on africacheck.org.

For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false

A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?

Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.

Publishers guide

Africa Check teams up with Facebook

Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.

The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.

You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
limit: 600 characters

Want to keep reading our fact-checks?

We will never charge you for verified, reliable information. Help us keep it that way by supporting our work.

Become a newsletter subscriber

Support independent fact-checking in Africa.