Indonesian President Joko Widodo inaugurated the country’s first high-speed railway on October 2. The 7.3 billion project is backed by the People’s Republic of China trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.
The Whoosh high-speed railway connects Jakarta with Bandung, the capital of West Java province, cutting travel time from three hours to 40 minutes, Voice of America reported Monday.
But on X, formerly Twitter, some pro-PRC users shared a picture of what they presented as a screenshot of the VOA’s report about the railway, which was illustrated with a picture of China’s GMC-48JS duel-powered rail track grinding train instead of the futuristic-looking Whoosh high-speed railway train.
Nik Stankovic, the X user who posted the original “screenshot,” speculated that VOA intentionally used a picture of the older and less advanced rail track in its report about the Whoosh railway:
“Voice of America chose this image to accompany the story about the beginning of official operation of BRI train in Indonesia.”
That claim is misleading.
Voice of America’s news center reports are illustrated with the proper image of the Whoosh high-speed railway.
Stankovic’s “screenshot” was altered with the English language headline from the reports in Mandarin and Cantonese languages.
Moreover, Stankovich’s implication that the choice of the old image was VOA’s editorial decision is false.
Voice of America’s Mandarin and Cantonese editors told Polygraph.info that they did initially use a wrong image in their website reports due to human error. The images have been immediately replaced upon discovery of the error and editors’ notes were added to both reports to reflect the correction.
Source : VOA News
