- Safiu Kehinde
An Al Jazeera journalist, Mehdi Hasan, has raised alarm over being targeted with fake news days after his interview with Nigerian Presidential spokesperson, Daniel Bwala.
Mehdi in a post on his X handle on Friday called the attention of the public to an old post attributed to him which he claimed is being twisted.
As seen in the old post, the journalist had allegedly written “Made American planes crash again” in a caption on a video of the 9/11 terrorists attack.
He had since come under fire with some accusing him inciting attacks on the United States.
Reacting to the tweet, Mehdi labelled it a fake post.
He explained that the caption on the video was from an old deleted post which he claimed to be his sarcastic take on last year’s plane crashes recorded in the United States after President Donald Trump’s reduction of air traffic controllers workforce.
As against the video attached to the post, Mehdi claimed he had made the tweet in reaction to a news report.
“This is a fake tweet. I posted those words, as a sarcastic take on all the plane crashes on Trump’s watch after he slashed air traffic controllers.
“I posted it over news of yet another crash, I never posted it with an image of 9/11. You’ve just invented this tweet to smear me.” Mehdi wrote.
A further confirmation of the Al Jazeera’s journalist’s claim by X’s AI chat bot. Grok, revealed that the original post where Mehdi made the statement dated back to February 2025.
Grok explained that the video was overlaid on the Mehdi’s text which was originally a sarcastic comment on a small plane crash in Georgia and Trump’s decision to lay off several airport officials, particularly the air traffic controllers.
Meanwhile, Mehdi came under the spotlight of the Nigerian public space with his interview with Bwala last week.
The Al Jazeera journalist had during the interview questioned Bwala over his past criticisms and allegations against President Bola Tinubu and the All Progressive Congress (APC)-led administration.
Despite Mehdi’s reference to videos of Press Conferences and TV interviews where Bwala made the allegations, Bwala denied ever making such allegations against Tinubu.
Prominent amongst his denied allegations was a clip where he claimed that the APC amd Tinubu established a militia group during preparation for the 2023 Presidential election.
He also denied accusing Tinubu of assassination plot against him.