SAHEEH MASR Country Egypt Established 2019 Website https://www.saheeh.news/ Reach Local Languages Arabic Purpose To fact check statements made by officials, politicians, media professionals, and decision makers To fact check information circulating on social networking sites Methodology Saheeh Masr has adopted a detailed methodology based on selecting claims and presenting corrections. The types of content they work with include false claims and misleading news reports, images, or videos. The platform has its own code of ethics and correction policy. Nature of work Fact checking statements made by officials and decision makers and verifying information Social media presence (as of January 2022) Facebook: more than 554,000 followers (https://www.facebook.com/SaheehMasr/) Twitter: more than 18,200 followers (https://twitter.com/SaheehMasr) circulated by media outlets about these issues. Saheeh Masr also corrects information on photos and blogs posted on social media sites as well as news published in newspapers and on news sites. It has published video reports that revealed conflicting statements made by officials on an issue. The platform is currently in the process of establishing a unit that will specialize in producing open-source investigative reports. The platform prefers to maintain its anonymity and the privacy of its nine-member team. A member of the team who was interviewed by the researchers asserted that the platform’s scrutiny of the statements made by Egyptian officials is crucial. The interviewee stated that this “helps citizens arrive at mature opinions and judgments, without succumbing to the falsification and the disinformation circulated by the media owned by the authorities or by those who oppose it. It also helps citizens in forming opinions in an equitable manner to determine the correct and responsible choices during elections” (interview, July 2021). On a daily basis, the platform checks three or four different statements by Egyptian officials and decision makers. Its level of interaction with members of the public on social media sites is very high. It tries to maintain impartiality through “avoiding political, religious or ethnic biases. The platform also scrutinizes statements and news pieces regardless of the political, religious, or ethnic identity of the speaker.” I N FO R M ATI O N D I SO R D ER IN THE GLOBA L SOUTH The platform faces many challenges, including security. Additionally, the fact that the team members cannot reveal their identities makes it difficult to communicate with live sources to obtain information and facts. The lack of legislation on the right to access information in Egypt and the insufficient amount of government and official information available online also hinder the platform’s work. What the platform needs most in order to develop its work is legal protection. According to the team, “Working anonymously limits our capabilities, but working without the security provided by anonymity is not safe in Egypt.” According to those in charge of the platform, the reasons why fact-checking platforms in the region tend to steer clear of statements by officials are “the fear of prosecution for security breaches and the fear of confrontations with the authorities, as well as the lack of a culture of liability and accountability.” Table 9: Overview of the operations of Saheeh Masr 4.5 ARIJ AND THE AFCN Towards the end of 2020, ARIJ launched the AFCN in order to counter the escalation in misand disinformation during the Covid-19 crisis. The AFCN’s work focuses on the lack of cooperation among fact-checking organizations and platforms in the Arab world, and also on the challenges these platforms face, especially the lack of Arabic resources and the need for training. Middle East and North Africa – 40