The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has wasted no time piling on the Guardian after the British paper admitted that a freelancer had fabricated numerous quotes in opinion and news stories.
"The accusation against a correspondent of The Guardian newspaper that he fabricated news and reports about the situation in Egypt is a clear indicator of the correctness of the positions that we have expressed more than once in the past about the inaccuracies and the lack of credibility of reports in the Guardian concerning the situation in Egypt," a ministry spokesman said in a statement on Facebook.
The Guardian was forced to remove 12 news stories and one opinion piece from a freelance contributor, Joseph Mayton, after an investigation uncovered likely fabrications. The paper also edited a number of his other submissions to remove unsubstantiated quotes and information. Mayton had written 37 articles for the Guardian, including a number of opinion pieces that he wrote about Egypt in 2009-2010. The 12 removed news stories were all about California, while quotes and information were removed from a number of opinion pieces about Egypt and the Middle East, along with one entire opinion piece on animal rights in the Middle East.
"We want to apologize to those people whose words were misrepresented or falsified. We also want to say sorry to you, our readers, for the errors that have been made here, and hope that it has not compromised the trust you place in the Guardian," the paper said in an apology. "We assure you we will do better."
Mayton has denied all of the allegations in a statement.
While Egypt has jumped on this admission as evidence supporting its longstanding claims that of bias against the Guardian, Mayton was never part of the paper's news team in Egypt and had not written about the country in more than six years.
"Joseph Mayton was not the Guardian’s Cairo correspondent and only contributed opinion pieces about Egypt, the last of which was published in 2010. He did not report news stories from, or about, Egypt for the Guardian," the paper said in a note appended to its apology Sunday.