The Ghana Integrity Initiative, the Local Chapter of Transparency International says a corruption ranking published by some media houses which ranks Ghana as the 3rd most corrupt country across the world by perception is fake and should be ignored.
A statement issued in Accra on Friday 17th January 2020 and signed by the Executive Director of GII, Linda Ofori-Kwafo, said though the story which was sourced from www.usnews.com mentioned Transparency International for its definition of corruption and some key statements from the 2018 theme, it did not attribute the rankings to TI.
“Following the interest, the said story has generated among the general public, GII wishes to officially state that either TII nor GII has released any such report” the statement said.
It, however, used the opportunity to announced that the 2019 Corruption Perception Index by GII will be released on Thursday 23rd January 2020.
In recent months, incidents of fake news publications have been on the upsurge. Mushroom news websites and social media appears to be gaining grounds as a fertile home for fake stories which are often attributed to credible individuals or institutions. Various actors globally are struggling to come to terms with the phenomenon.