Out of Context and Misleading: The Photo of Winnie Banyima And Director of Public Prosecution Jane Frances Abodo Is From Another Incident
An X post by the Kampala Journal News (KJNews) claiming that Winnie Byanyima the Executive Director of the United Nations AIDS program, in desperation met with the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), Jane Frances Abodo to seek her help over her husband, Dr Kizza Besigye’s case is out of context
KJNews, while updating a story about Besigye, used a picture of the two ladies as evidence for their meeting regarding prominent opposition personnel Kizza Besigye, who was arrested from neighbouring Kenya recently.
The post read;
“ UPDATE: Desperate UNAIDs boss Byanyima seeks DPP Abodo assistance in complicated Besigye case.”
Evidence
There is indeed a case against Besigye before the General Court Martial, where he is facing charges of illegal possession and an attempt to purchase arms abroad, as reported here. Since then, media reports about his trial have been published here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Whereas it is true that there’s an active case against Dr Kizza Besugye and that Winnie Banyima is his spouse, her meeting as depicted in the photo with Mrs Achia Jane Frances Abodo is being used out of context by KJNews
We arrived at that fact by downloading the photo and doing a Google Reverse Image Search. The results show that the photo was first shared on December 21, 2022, by Byanyima on her X account when she ran into Abodo while at Entebbe Airport.
In her post, Byanyima commended President Yoweri Museveni who she referred to as the “man with the hat” for the wonderful choice he made appointing Abodo as DPP.
“@ EBB airport, lucky to bump into Uganda’s Director of Public Prosecutions & introduce myself. One of many brilliant young Ugandan women in senior public roles.
I don’t usually agree with the man in the hat, but on giving young women opportunity to lead, I him!” Read Byanyima’s X post
KJNews used the same picture to paint a narrative on Nov 24, 2024, approximately two years later from when the picture was taken (Dec 21, 2022, 6:53 PM.) and managed to attract over 167.2K viewers and more reactions.
Fortunately, several people commenting understand that the platform cannot be trusted to be bearers of factual news, as seen in the post’s comment section.
For an ethically compliant media platform, it is required that the use of an old picture or video should be clarified as a file photo/video, something that tells the audience when the video was first published and if the content is not yours, in the case it is required to credit the source of photo or footage.
We do not see that in the KJNews post and it misleads their viewers
Verdict
Both out of context and Misleading. The image used by KJNews is not of the meeting between Byanyima and Abodo over Besigye’s case but a moment they shared while in the lobby at Entebbe airport in 2022.