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Indonesia warns over ‘fake news’ after deadly jet crash
JAKARTA, Oct 30, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Indonesia warned social media users on
Tuesday against spreading hoaxes, as rescue teams searched for human remains
from a horrifying jet crash.
A string of false stories have been circulating online since the Lion Air
plane plunged into the sea off Jakarta on Monday with 189 people on board.
“For all of us, please don’t spread photos of victims and hoaxes. Please be
wise,” Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency spokesman, Sutopo Purwo
Nugroho, tweeted.
Sutopo, who has made a name for himself as a straight-talker, highlighted a
number of pictures and videos that are making the rounds.
They included Facebook postings showing a photograph of a baby in a life
jacket purportedly rescued from the plane’s wreckage.
One of the posts — which was shared nearly 5,000 times in the first 24
hours — gave fictional details about the apparent rescue.
“There are many social media posts that claim to show an image of a baby
who survived the flight JT610 plane crash,” he said.
“This photo in fact shows a baby who was rescued from (a boat) that sank…
on Tuesday, July 3, 2018. So this information is a hoax. Please don’t spread
hoaxes.”
Search and rescue agency officials have all but ruled out finding any
survivors from Monday’s disaster.
Indonesia has a long-standing problem with internet hoaxes, and fake news
is never far behind after a disaster.
The country has one of the world’s biggest online audiences, with a
population of 260 million people and one of the world’s highest social media
usage rates.
In the days after a tsunami swamped the coastal city of Palu in late
September, numerous false stories began circulating, prompting police to make
a number of arrests.
Hoaxes were also rampant during a quake disaster on the island of Lombok in
the summer.
Sutopo warned this week against other pieces of fake news, including images
of passengers with air masks on and a video of people screaming, both falsely
claiming to show the final few minutes before the crash.
Sutopo said they were in fact taken on different flights “some time ago”
during turbulence and all passengers survived.
A video on YouTube that claims to show the jet crashing into the water was
actually of a hijacked Ethiopian Airline that crash-landed in the Indian
Ocean in 1996, he said. A misleading image of plane debris found by rescuers
dates back to a Lion Air accident in 2013, near the runway of a Bali Airport,
he said.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1913 hrs