FACT CHECK: Did president William Ruto’s cow deliver triplets?
The picture is of a Canadian-based cattle improvement cooperative.
This tweet (archived here) bearing images of a cow that has seemingly given birth to triplets, was posted by Nandi senator, Samson Cherargei on Apr 11, 2023 and elicited mixed reactions on social media.
The text accompanying the photo read; ‘H.E Ruto cow gives birth to triplets of his symbolic leadership. 5 years of backfilling debt hole created by Uhuru + Raila into economic transformation. 5 yrs for economic stability. 5yrs of Kenya prosperity of milk + honey, 15 yrs of uninterrupted economic transformation.’
In recent times, misinformation has been rife across social media platforms and Kenya has been a good breeding ground for fake news. From fabricated videos to fake photos used to represent misleading contexts.
In this circus,iInfluential political leaders have propagated fake material that is either malicious to the reputation of their opponents or carefully crafted to boost their own popularity. And these fake claims have seemingly influenced the less informed.
NTV’s investigations unit has previously looked into these propagations, closely examining influential political figures, government bodies and members of parliament with verified accounts on Twitter.
Last month, for instance, during the first day of the opposition protests, we debunked a video posted by the Embakasi East Member of Parliament, Babu Owino. In the video shared on his Twitter page, he wrote “Situation at Jacaranda Embakasi East. Police have shot one person dead.”
Accompanying the tweet was a grainy video of two groups clashing with each other, in what appears to be a deadly confrontation.
https://youtu.be/1Z2aPoNX4y4 – WADR: Fact-checking Babu Owino’s alleged violence tweet
The tweet, which was later deleted from his page, had people’s attention and generated over two-hundred thousand views. This viral video was misleading, as we established its origins in Congo, and had nothing to do with the protests in Kenya.
Similarly, our team looked into a Twitter thread containing photos posted by the Directorate of criminal investigation (DCI) and established some of the images were from incidents as long as fifteen years ago used to advance a claim in a different context, as seen here.
https://youtu.be/dZBj0FK86Tk – DCI publishes false, misleading information purporting to be from Azimio’s Monday demonstrations
However, Google’s reverse image search results established that the image shared by the Nandi senator, Samson Cherargei, first appeared on a Canadian based cattle improvement cooperative Instagram handle and is unrelated to the purported circumstance.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CoHZht5snGu/
This picture was equally shared on the organization’s German Facebook page on Monday, January 30th, 2023 with the caption.
‘Brothers Jason and Jonas were not badly surprised when their favorite cow Elisa gave birth to not one, but directly three calves of the bull freestyle without any problems. Since then, the three calves Emma, Ella, and Emil have enjoyed the best health and abundant cuddles and are diligently fed by the two proud brothers from Lichtenau every day. Jason and Jonas’ family run a dairy farm with 80 dairy cows.
We would like to thank the Agethen family for the great pictures and wish the triplets a lot of joy!’
https://www.facebook.com/100049547145256/posts/718175346510697/
After examining the tweet with an image purportedly of a cow belonging to Kenya’s president William Ruto, we found it to be false.