A Facebook post put up by Minister of Education (Higher Education) Ong Ye Kung has been dubbed “fake news” by netizens.

On Tuesday (12 Sept), Ong had posted a photo of a giant underwater iceberg and said in the caption that he got the photo “from a former colleague, who in turn got it from a rig manager working on an offshore rig at Newfoundland”.

Ong added, “The sea was calm, sun directly overhead, and the diver managed to get a perfect shot. It shows how small we humans are compared to the creations of Mother Nature.”

However, commenters pointed out that the photo in question was actually produced 18 years ago in 1999 by Ralph A Clevenger, a professional nature and underwater photographer.

According to Clevenger, the image is a composite of four different photos taken at different locations around the planet. The images were then pieced together in Photoshop.

Netizens recognised the photo and commented on the posts, with some correcting Ong.

Facebook user Benjamin Matchap called it “FAKENEWS!”, while another, Raymond Tham, said “it is a composite shot by a famous photographer” and added the hashtag #fakenews.

Another Bertrand Tan, also pointed out it is a “composite image of four different icebergs”, before adding “Must be careful of fake news”.

In June this year, Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam said that news laws will be introduced to combat the “very serious” nature of fake news. The laws may involve working with online platforms to track and debunk falsehoods.

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