Upstream and Downstream responds to Ghost King: Please do not spread fake news to mislead readers

On April 16, Upstream and Downstream published the article "United Nations on Site: Farewell to the Green Revolution, Turning to Ecological Agriculture | FAO Promotes a New Wave of Agricultural Science Revolution," which sparked enthusiastic responses from all sectors. Ghost King, who has always paid attention to agricultural development, also responded on the "Wenqing Bie Guiche" Facebook fan page.

However, Ghost King cited unreliable sources and spread "fake news" to mislead readers. To defend press freedom and readers' rights, Upstream and Downstream specially issued a statement to set the record straight:

1. Ghost King incorrectly cited 2016 materials; they were not from the 2018 symposium the reporter attended

Ghost King stated that, in order to clarify FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva's doubts about the "Green Revolution," he specifically found the speech video to listen to and provided a link to a "verbatim transcript" (the link provided by Ghost King), using it to accuse the Upstream and Downstream article of being "taken out of context, a disgusting piece of nonsense reporting."

However, after clicking the link provided by Ghost King, the upper left clearly says: 24 November 2016. In other words, this was a statement made by da Silva nearly two years ago, and the occasion was the "Regional Symposium on Agroecology for Europe and Central Asia," held in Hungary.

In short, the evidence Ghost King used to accuse Upstream and Downstream of inaccurate reporting is wrong in both time and place. It is not the Second "Symposium on Agroecology" held in April 2018 at FAO headquarters in Rome that the reporter attended.