Screenshots of an article that allegedly flooded the “largest seizure of human organs in history” of a cargo ship flooded social media feeds and caused uproar; but users ignored an important part of the context: the story was published by a satirical website.
Examples of such posts can be seen here, here, here, here. Comments include: “funded by the Transgender movement” and “incredible that these people are sick.”
A Google search for the headline “Chinese authorities seize more than 7,200 human penises on a cargo ship from Nigeria” led to the satirical website World News Daily Report (here, archive.ph/a9rbk).
The site contains an indemnity at the bottom of the page stating that he “accepts all responsibility for the satirical nature of his articles and for the fictional nature of their content” and that all characters in the stories are “completely fictional.”
The story contains a photo of the Chinese General Administration of Customs that can be seen in Alamy, a service of stock images (bit.ly/32hFjGi). According to the description, the image dates from April 2019 and shows a press conference on the capture of 7.48 tons of smuggled ivory by Chinese customs (bit.ly/3aaLXCS).
The article, published on March 19, has since been repeated on at least five sites targeting Nigerian audiences; While some articles attribute the information to World News Daily Reports (WNDR), no one acknowledges that the story was intended as satire (archive.ph/AQiwS, archive.ph/xx4d4, archive.ph/UVPlj, archive.ph/9FziE, archive. ph / jGosQ).
On April 13, Nigerian politician Femi Fani-Kayode tweeted about the story as if it were authentic ( here ). “This is not a joke, but a serious question,” he said.
VERDICT
Untrue. A story about 7,200 Nigerian organs found in a cargo ship in China was produced and intended as satire.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to actually check social media posts.