The Standard Group on Wednesday, March 27 refuted claims that the organisation was facing bankruptcy and would be shutting down.
In a statement issued by the Group’s Acting Chief Executive Officer, (C.E.O), Joe Munene the media house stated that the information circulating online was purporting a false narrative.
“The Standard Group PLC wishes to inform its audiences, customers, suppliers, staff, shareholders and all other stakeholders that information circulating on social media touching on the integrity of the Company, its Management and Staff is fake”, read the statement.
Further, the media house confirmed that their services across all their broadcasting platforms would continue running uninterrupted.
According to the statement, the online attacks against the media house are an attempt to derail them from discharging their journalistic mandate.
“These are malicious attacks, whose intention is to derail our unflinching commitment to the mission of journalism and the pursuit of the public interest,” stated Munene.
However, the media house noted that there was a hostile environment for media operations that slowed down the payment of bills and the general economic environment.
“Further, despite the hostile business environment facing the media industry, caused largely by the problem of pending bills and a slowdown in the overall economy, we continue to transform our business to best serve our customers, explained Standard Group.
Earlier on in the day, social media users alleged that the Mombasa-Road media house was packing up and would be liquidated.
Adding on to the false claims, the section of social media users also proceeded to create a fake internal memo purporting to be from the Group Managing Director.
For the better part of the day, on Wednesday, there were fake headlines purpoted to be from local publications and a hashtag spreading the narrative that the organisation would be closed imminently.
The group, however, has been facing financial problems with employees from the institution alleging that they had not received salaries for periods dating up to eight months.
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