Fake News: Prince Charles Did NOT Say He Didn't Know Ghanaians Need Visas When Visiting UK, Did NOT Promise To Do Something About It

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Prince Charles Did NOT Say He Didn't Know Ghanaians Need Visas When Visiting UK, Did NOT Promise To Do Something About It

Did Prince Charles say he didn't know people from Ghana needed a visa to visit the United Kingdom and did he promise to do something about that when he got back home from his state visit to the country? No, that's not true: the only site pushing the story is a satire website from Ghana, it is not real.

The story originated from an article published by News@7 on November 6, 2018 titled "Prince Charles says he never knew Ghanaians need visas when visiting the UK; Prince of Wales is shocked and promises to do something - Ghana News" (archived here) which opened:

The visiting Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, is in shock after learning that Ghanaians need visas before visiting the United Kingdom.

Prince Charles says he never knew the travel policy that permitted Ghanaians to visit the UK without visas has been amended.

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall also heard it for the first time after Ghanaian comedian Clemento Suarez drew her attention to the tough immigration policies imposed on Ghanaians by the UK that seek to extort funds from visa applicants.

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:

Prince Charles says he never knew Ghanaians need visas when visiting the UK; Prince of Wales is shocked and promises to do something - Ghana News

The Prince is Surprised!

Charles and Camilla are indeed currently visiting Ghana, here is a BBC report on the trip:

A royal visit to a land of princes

Ghanaian journalist Elizabeth Ohene reflects on Prince Charles' visit to Ghana.

But it doesn't mention anything about visas and we found no other official news sources that confirmed the quote is real. That makes sense because the site News@7 shares an Adsense account with jetsanza.com and a Google Analytics account with breaking-cnn.com, two sites that have been linked to or were part of a large network of Ghana-based fake news websites.

The site comes with a satire warning in the footer that was itself copied from a famous hoax website:

sat·ire ~ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, OR ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
If you disagree with the definition of satire or have decided it is synonymous with "comedy," you should really just move along.

We wrote about news7pm.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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