AFP fact-check: Manila has no brand new airport

For those who believed and shared a social media post about a “new” airport in Manila, here’s a reality check: It’s fake news.

The Agence France Presse (AFP) on Wednesday debunked a false report that claims of a brand new airport in Manila that were shared by over a million on Facebook.

The French news agency noted the “misleading articles” that circulated online “show a montage of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and the purported new airport terminal.”

But, the AFP’s fact-checking revealed: “There is no new airport in Manila and the false reports use an image from a design for a planned Chinese airport to mislead.”

Screenshot courtesy of AFP

It then clarified that the terminal used in the false reports “is not of a new one in the Philippines.”

The AFP said the image of an airport was “traced back to a Chinese project by the international architecture firm Corgan.”

Corgan’s website, according to AFP, said the image is part of the firm’s proposed design for an airport in the Northeastern Chinese city of Dalian.

“Philippine aviation authorities and the state-run media have also not reported that there is any new airport in Manila,” the AFP pointed out.

People’s Television Network is the government’s official television station.

According to the AFP, “The post has been widely shared by Facebook groups that support Duterte and his political allies.”

Below is a snapshot courtesy of the AFP from CrowdTangle, a social media monitoring platform, which showed that one of the false reports accumulated shares by over 800,000 people on Facebook:

Screenshot courtesy of AFP

Meanwhile, another version of the same false information from a different website garnered more than 200,000 Facebook shares as shown below: 

Screenshot courtesy of AFP

/kga