After Taifa Leo reported on the deregistration of Kings Outreach Church, a branch of Prophet David Owuor’s Repentance and Holiness Ministry, by the Registrar of Societies, a coordinated social media campaign with the hashtags #TaifaLeoFakeNews, #TheStarCorrectsTaifaLeo, and #BoycottNationMediaToday targeted the Nation Media Group, which publishes Taifa Leo, urging Kenyans to boycott the publication and other NMG products.
On August 3, 2023, two months after Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki pledged to fight against ‘rogue’ churches and preachers, the Registrar of Societies struck off the registration certificates of five churches – the Theophilus Church, Kings Outreach Church, Helicopter of Christ Church, Newlife Prayer Center, and controversial pastor Paul Mackenzie’s Good News International Ministries.
The deregistration was documented in the Kenya Gazette (pg 23) Notice No. 184 of 2023 and was reported on by several media houses, including NTV Kenya, The Star, and K24.
The deregistration was also reported in a Taifa Leo article dated August 18, 2023, which highlighted previous issues involving two of these churches – Newlife Prayer Center and Church, and Good News International. Newlife’s registration had previously been threatened for failure to remit financial reports to the Kenya Revenue Authority. However, a day after Attorney General Justin Muturi made these claims during a Senate ad-hoc committee probing the Shakahola deaths, Ezekiel presented KRA documents confirming his tax compliance.
The Good News International Church, also mentioned in the article, is led by pastor Paul Mackenzie, who is on trial for the deaths of over 400 members of his congregation between January 2021 and December 2023. Mackenzie had reportedly ordered his followers to starve themselves and their children to death to ‘go to heaven’, and the victims’ bodies were buried in shallow graves in the Shakahola Forest. Mackenzie and his accomplices remain in custody at The Shimo La Tewa Maximum Prison and have so far been charged with manslaughter, murder, and terrorism.
The Taifa Leo article mentions Mackenzie’s actions in the context of the article as being the cause of an inquiry and the subsequent deregistration of these churches. Pastor Ezekiel Odero of The Newlife Prayer Center, also on the list, was previously linked to Mackenzie. However, he denies this connection, stating they only met once when he wanted to buy Mackenzie’s TV station.
Followers of one other church on the deregistration list, Kings Outreach Church associated with self-proclaimed Prophet David Owuor, expressed disagreement with how Taifa Leo reported on the matter. During a press briefing, Prophet Owuor’s legal team clarified that the dissolution of The King’s Outreach Church had nothing to do with the Shakahola massacre adding that the process to dissolve the church was initiated on December 3, 2022, after members unanimously decided to dissolve it during an AGM.
A section of the members, through social media posts, claimed the publication falsely linked the Kings Outreach Church’s deregistration to the Shakahola massacre. Contrary to these claims, the article does not link the deregistration to the Shakahola massacre, only reporting on the deregistration and citing the Kenya Gazette as its source. Prophet Owuor and the Kings Outreach Church are only mentioned concerning the deregistration, with the rest of the article focusing on Pastor Ezekiel’s legal challenges.
Piga Firimbi reached out to Winnie Onyando, the journalist who worked on the article to gauge the impact of the messages on her professional and personal life. She revealed she only became aware of the story’s wide reach when someone asked her about it via a WhatsApp group.
“I faced criticism from various groups”, Winnie said. “In one group, members saw the story but I provided them with the Gazette emphasizing that it was the source of the story, so they should direct their concerns to whoever wrote the Gazette, not me.”
Within twenty four hours of Taifa Leo’s article publication, individuals linked to The Kings Outreach Church launched a coordinated social media campaign against the Nation Media Group using hashtags that included #TaifaLeoFakeNews, #BoycottNationMediaToday, and #TheStarCorrectsTaifaLeo. These posts gained traction on Facebook, TikTok, X, and Instagram.
Coordinated Campaigns Slandering the Nation Media Group
The three hashtags gained traction on social media platforms, accumulating over 20,000 mentions on X, the claims garnered considerable attention and discussion on August 19, a day after the article was published.
Most posts featured the front page of Taifa Leo, prominently displaying “FAKE NEWS” as if indicating a thorough fact-checking process. The posts were accompanied by captions refuting claims suggesting a link between the deregistration of the Kings Outreach Church and the Shakahola incident.
The initial post featuring the hashtag #TaifaLeoFakeNews originated from an account on X (formerly Twitter) under Pst Bosuben Calvin.
After Calvin Bosuben’s post, more posts bearing the same captions, hashtags, and images were then shared from various parts of the world (data here) including Ukraine, South Korea, Finland, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Philippines, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, and Cameroon.
A map showing the origin of the coordinated posts on X
The major accounts amplifying these hashtags on X were DelphineEvelyn1, Jo_AnneCM, RepentinCHRIST, 002Raymond, HumphreyAdenya, and EddyLavina. Their posts garnered significant attention, amassing over 80,000 views and more than 1,000 reposts.
Between 5:05 pm and 6:00 pm on August 19, a series of posts with identical text and images circulated on X arguing that the deregistration of the King’s Outreach Church was unrelated to what they termed as “Kasumba ya Shakahola” (Swahili for ‘Shakahola brainwashing’). The first post with these words was from an account registered under the username 002Raymond, one of the accounts highlighted above as one of the primary accounts behind the trending hashtags.
A sentiment analysis of the posts shared on X shows that 64.7% were negative showing the impact this campaign had on public opinion through the spread of misinformation.
This coordinated campaign featuring the three hashtags came when President Ruto’s administration was openly critical of the media, accusing them of aligning with the opposition. Proponents of the hashtags capitalized on the government’s criticism to their advantage. On August 16, 2023, during the Devolution Conference, President William Ruto in his address to the nation, called on the Nation Media Group to stop what he termed as “their tirade against the people of Kenya and the government.” Accounts alleging the Nation Media Group had published fake news regarding the deregistration of the Kings Outreach Church attached the video of the president making these utterances to posts here, here, here, and here. The accompanying captions on the posts cast doubt on the credibility and professionalism of the Nation Media Group.
The narrative accusing the Nation Media Group of disseminating fake news extended to Facebook and Instagram. The authors used the same images featured on X on posts shared on Facebook calling the media company “pathological liars”. These posts featured Bible verses forewarning consequences for those with lying tongues. The hashtag #TheTruthIsNoble was also added to the posts on Facebook.
On TikTok, posts featured the images below and an identical audio clip. In the clip, the speaker declares their refusal to let the Nation Media Group avoid accountability for publishing fake news. They also call for NMG to compensate the affected church for defamation.
This isn’t the first time individuals connected to Prophet Owuor have run a coordinated campaign againstNation Media Group. On February 3, 2019, they launched an attack targeting Njoki Chege, a journalist and media trainer, who wrote an article in the Saturday Nation criticizing Prophet Owuor after he claimed he had resurrected a woman. The hashtags used during that campaign were #SomeoneTellNjokiChege, #NjokiChegeShouldKnow, and #NationMediaGutterPress.
The coordinated disinformation campaign targeting Taifa Leo is not the first and will very likely not be the last by a section of Prophet Owuor’s congregation against anyone who challenges their leader and beliefs. Even though the Taifa Leo article did not directly link them to Shakahola, the mere mention of their deregistration alongside the Good News International Church was enough to stir up a storm in the form of a coordinated online influence operation. Such campaigns emphasize the challenges media houses face while covering controversial topics and maintaining journalistic integrity in the face of organized opposition and may often work to derail the objective watchdog function of the media.
This article was produced with mentorship from the African Academy for Open Source Investigations (AAOSI), to tackle disinformation that undermines our democracies, as part of an initiative by the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) and Code for Africa (CfA). Visit disinfo.africa for more information.
This article was edited by Piga Firimbi Fact-checking Editor Calvin Rock
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