The Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, has published a post on his official Facebook profile regarding the institutional decision of this country which foresees that the wearing of masks will become mandatory for citizens. In this post, Prime Minister Rama has attached an album of photos describing the critical situation that people from all over the world were facing during the spread of the virus known as the “Spanish Flu” in 1918, to take the opportunity to make the wearing of masks mandatory.
The same post by Rama made on October 15th was reported as false content on Facebook, based on research conducted by the English-language fact-checking platform – checkyourfact.com.
Prime Minister Edi Rama's post:
However, after an investigation by hibrid.info, it was found that Facebook has based its research on inadequate research for Prime Minister Rama's post. The research by checkyourfact.com actually addresses a completely different context, which is not related to the authenticity of the content or photos posted by Rama. The research by checkyourfact.com concerns the authenticity of a poem about social distancing, the distribution of which went viral at the beginning of the spread of the Corona virus, with the claim that the author of this poem is the Franco-Irish writer, Kathleen O'Meara.
Some posts claim that the poem was written in 1869 after the potato famine in Ireland in the mid-19th century. Other posts claim that the poem was reprinted “during the 1919 pandemic,” at the time of the Spanish flu outbreak that began in 1918.
In fact, many fact-checking platforms reported this claim as false, finding that the poem was not by the writer in question in 1869, but by a retired American teacher from Madison, Wisconsin named Catherine (Kitty) O'Meara in March of this year (2020).
The platform checkyourfact.com also addresses such a post from a Facebook profile, which claims that the poem in question was published in 1869, and which attempts to draw parallels between the social distancing measures practiced during the "Spanish flu" and those of this year (2020), during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Excerpt from checkyourfact.com research:
A viral Facebook post claims that French-Irish writer Kathleen O'Meara wrote the poem "In the Time of Pandemic" in 1869.
The post claims that the poem about social distancing was originally written in 1869 by Kathleen O'Meara and later republished during the "Spanish Flu" pandemic that began in 1918.
Verdict: False
Retired teacher Catherine O'Meara actually wrote the poem in March.
Checkyourfact.com research link:
Analyze:
In all likelihood, Facebook took the research photo from the checkyourfact.com platform, which also appeared in Rama's post, as a basis when it decided to label this post as false content, which according to hibrid.info appears to be out of context with the Albanian Prime Minister's post.