This week’s selection of viral rumors plays on people’s fears and exploits partisan beliefs.

NO: The woman in the background in this video of a vaccination clinic in Mexico did not die after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. YES: She fainted.

Tip: Be wary of posts that seek to connect isolated incidents with COVID-19 vaccines. Anti-vaccination activists continue to use coincidental events, including celebrity deaths, and misleading or out-of-context videos to spread fear and falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines.

Related:

• “Facebook races to remove anti-vaccine profile picture frames” (Lauren Feiner, CNBC).
• “Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes On Social Media, Research Shows” (Shannon Bond, NPR’s All Things Considered).
• “Distancing from the vaccinated: Viral anti-vaccine infertility misinfo reaches new extremes” (April Glaser and Brandy Zadrozny, NBC News).

NO: The video in this tweet does not show Hamas militants firing rockets from populated areas in the Gaza Strip in May 2021. YES: This video has been online since at least June 2018 and was claimed to be related to the conflict in Syria. YES: The above tweet was posted by Ofir Gendelman, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson. YES: It has since been deleted.

Note: This video was also used out of context in a December 2019 tweet that claimed it was footage from Tripoli, Libya.

Tip: Photos and videos of rockets being fired, particularly at night, are easy to pass off out of context.

NO: This TikTok video does not show a barrage of rockets being fired at or from Gaza in May 2021. YES: This video appears to show a test of a multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) and has been online since at least November 2018.

Note: This clip also went viral out of context in January 2020 after Iran fired ballistic missiles at military bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq.

Related: “As violence in Israel and Gaza plays out on social media, activists raise concerns about tech companies’ interference” (Antonia Noori Farzan, The Washington Post).

NO: The U.S. Census Bureau did not confirm any conflicts or problems related to the number of voters in the 2020 presidential election. NO: Census figures do not show that there was “a discrepancy of nearly four million votes” in the election. YES: The total number of votes in the 2020 election exceeded the number of people who reported to the Census Bureau that they had voted. YES: More than 36 million people age 18 and older did not tell the Census Bureau whether or not they voted in the election. YES: Researchers previously have found mismatches between people who say they voted and their actual voting record.

Related: “‘A Perpetual Motion Machine’: How Disinformation Drives Voting Laws” (Maggie Astor, The New York Times).

This week’s selection of viral rumors includes common subjects: celebrities, photos from space and frightening content as engagement bait.

 

NO: LeBron James did not say he didn’t want anything to do with white people. YES: In the first episode of the HBO show The Shop in 2018, James shared that he was initially wary of white people at his predominantly white Catholic high school in Akron, Ohio. YES: In telling this story on The Shop, James said [link warning: profanity], “when I first went to the ninth grade … I was so institutionalized, growing up in the hood, it’s like … they don’t want us to succeed … so I’m like, I’m going to this school to play ball, and that’s it. I don’t want nothing to do with white people. I don’t believe that they want anything to do with me.” YES: The conversation went on to clarify that these initial feelings soon changed as sports and basketball created friendships.

Note: This misleading quote has gone viral several times before. It recently recirculated after James tweeted a photo of a police officer who was identified as firing the shots that killed Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio, on April 20, along with the message “YOU’RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY.” James later deleted the tweet.

Related:

• “Did Lebron James Say He Wants Nothing To Do With White People?” (Dan Evon, Snopes).
• “Viral image uses doctored photo to paint LeBron James as pro-China” (Andy Nguyen, PolitiFact).

 

NO: This is not a photo of Saturn. YES: It’s an artistic rendering of the imagined view from the Cassini spacecraft during one of its final, close passes over Saturn in 2017.

Tip: Fake or doctored photos supposedly from space are a common type of “engagement bait” online.

Resource: Reverse image search tutorial (NLP’s Checkology® virtual classroom).

 

 

NO: COVID-19 is not automatically declared the cause of death for anyone who dies within 20 days of testing positive for the virus. YES: The cause of death in the United States is determined by local coroners, medical examiners, and other officials across more than 2,000 independent jurisdictions, according to the president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, who was interviewed by Lead Stories. NO: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not control death certificate decisions and has no authority to overrule local medical examiners. NO: There is no conspiracy to falsely inflate the number of COVID-19 deaths.

Related: “How COVID Death Counts Become the Stuff of Conspiracy Theories” (Victoria Knight and Julie Appleby, Kaiser Health News).

 

 

NO: This video is not live footage of a gas station explosion. YES: This May 7 post on Facebook appears to use video footage from 2014 of a fire exploding at a gas station in Russia, according to the fact-checker Lead Stories.

Note: This is another example of “engagement bait.”

Tip: You can use reverse image search to look for the origin of videos by taking screenshots of different video frames.

Related: “How to find the source of a video (or, how to do a reverse video search)” (Gaelle Faure, AFP Fact Check).

A piece of digital artwork of flamingos in Venice’s Grand Canal was mistaken as authentic and shared on social media:

NO: This photo of flamingos in the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy, is not authentic. YES: It is a piece of digital artwork that was posted to Instagram on April 24.

Note: The verified Instagram account that shared it belongs to Kristina Makeeva, a photographer and digital artist in Moscow, who posts as “hobopeeba.” In reply to people who asked if the flamingo photo was real, she replied “no.”

Related: “The Animal Fact Checker” (Savannah Jacobson, Columbia Journalism Review)

This viral rumor drew a good deal of attention after a select clip was featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and other prominent people amplified the false story before it was debunked:

NO: Vice President Mike Pence did not deliver empty boxes to the Woodbine Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center in Alexandria, Virginia, on May 7, pretending they were full of personal protective equipment (PPE). YES: Pence did deliver boxes filled with PPE to the nursing home. NO: Pence was not “caught on hot mic” admitting that the boxes were empty, as this tweet from Matt McDermott, a political strategist, claims.

YES: After the boxes of PPE were delivered, an aide told Pence that the remaining boxes in the van were empty, and the vice president made a joke about moving them “just for the camera.” YES: Jimmy Kimmel, host of the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live!, aired a “selectively edited” (as a campaign spokesman for Pence put it) clip of the delivery on his show that night, then tweeted the clip the next morning. YES: The claim that Pence’s team had staged the delivery went viral — and was amplified by a number of prominent media figures — before being debunked.

Protestors recently staged demonstrations in states that issued stay-at-home orders and business closures in efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. Since then, images of protest signs with doctored messages have been circulating on social media.

NO: The protest sign in this tweet is not authentic. YES: The sign actually said  “Give me liberty or give me death” (h/t @jjmacnab). YES: The photo — taken on April 17 in Huntington Beach, California — shows people protesting statewide stay-at-home orders.

Note: The photo, by Jeff Gritchen of The Orange County Register, is included in the gallery at the top of this report on the protest (possible paywall).

NO: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did not digitally add a Confederate flag to a photo of a protest against a recent extension of the stay-at-home order in Wisconsin. YES: The man holding a pole flying a Gadsden flag (“Don’t tread on me”) above a Confederate flag can be seen (at around the 0:20 mark) in a video of the protest posted to Facebook. YES: Another man wearing a nearly identical plaid shirt was holding another pole with a Gadsden flag.

Related: 

• “No, a Journal Sentinel image of Confederate flag at Brookfield rally was not doctored, as false accusations on Facebook claim” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).
• National Press Photographers Association Code of Ethics.

Discuss: What standards and ethics policies relating to photos do quality news organizations strive to abide by? What kinds of alterations to photos are ethical and allowed at standards-based news organizations? What kinds are not? What kinds of consequences might photojournalists face if they are caught breaching those standards?

Idea: Invite a photojournalist from a local news outlet to discuss photojournalism ethics and standards with your students.

A photo of a tank in downtown Toronto is circulating on social media with a caption suggesting was taken during the stay-at-home order. But is it really a demonstration of military enforcement of order?

NO: It was not taken this month — or even this year. YES: Canadian Armed Forces Operations posted it on Twitter on Oct, 1, 2016, when members of the Canadian military arrived at Yonge-Dundas Square for Nuit Blanche, an all-night arts event. YES: On April 5, Toronto-area residents were advised “to expect a larger number of [military] personnel and vehicles” on the roads in the next few days as units relocated to a base about 60 miles from the city to set up a COVID-19 response task force.

Idea: Share an archived version of this post with students and give them a sequence of digital verification challenges, including:

• Determining whether the claim (that the photo was taken in 2020) is true. (It’s not.)
• Finding the original tweet from the Canadian military (linked above).
• Finding the precise location using Google Street View.

If you want to make the challenge even harder, ask students to use different ways to prove that the image is not from 2020. For example, they might use critical observation skills to note that one of the billboards in the background, though partially cut off, announces the opening of a Uniqlo retail store on Sept. 30. A quick lateral search for “Uniqlo store opening Toronto Sept. 30” should produce results confirming that the chain announced Sept. 30 as the opening day for a store in CF Toronto Eaton Centre. Or students might try to use the billboards in another way: If they can find another photo of Yonge-Dundas Square with the same billboards displayed, they can demonstrate that this photo wasn’t taken in 2020.

Comparing a user-contributed photo on Google Maps that is time-stamped October 2016 (top) with the Facebook post falsely claiming that the tank photo was taken in 2020 (bottom) offers further proof that the photo is not a current one. Click the image to view a larger version.

This screenshot of a video circulating on social media claims to show body bags piling up in a New York City hospital. Is this claim true?”

NO: The video in this tweet was not shot at a hospital in New York City. YES: It was captured at the Hospital General del Norte de Guayaquil IESS Los Ceibos in Guayaquil, Ecuador. YES: The same video clip has previously been taken out of context to make false claims about conditions in hospitals in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain.

Note: The fact check linked above, published by the Spanish fact-checking organization Maldita.es, is a good example of using digital forensics tools and methods to verify the location and other details of a piece of content. This tweet thread by Mark Snoeck, an open source investigator, provides additional evidence that the video was shot at IESS Los Ceibos by comparing interior photos of the hospital (from Google Maps and Flickr) with stills from the video:

An image from Snoeck’s tweet thread compares two stills from the viral video (far right, top and bottom) with a photo of the interior of the Hospital General del Norte de Guayaquil IESS Los Ceibos in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to match details such as signage, electrical outlets, trim and door. Maldita.es used similar methods in its fact check.

Netanyahu shares Hallmark Channel clip

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent several members of his cabinet a video clip of soldiers dumping bodies in landfills, claiming it was proof that Iran was concealing the number of COVID-19 deaths, Axios reported on April 1. According to the item by Barak Ravid, a diplomatic correspondent for Israel’s Channel 13 News who also writes for Axios, the video had been circulating in Iran and was sent to Netanyahu by his national security advisor, Meir Ben-Shabbat. Netanyahu talked about it during a conference call with his cabinet on March 31, and several people asked to see it, Ravid wrote. The video was actually a clip from a 2007 Hallmark Channel mini-series, “Pandemic.” The prime minister’s office told Ravid that the cabinet members who received the video were told that its authenticity had not been confirmed.

False and dangerous mask-wearing advice

Beware social media posts from unverified accounts providing health advice. This post office guidance on two ways to wear medical masks, depending on whether you are sick or not. Should you trust this advice?

NO: Medical masks are not intended to be worn two different ways — one if you’re sick (and trying to avoid infecting others) and the other if you’re not sick (and trying to avoid being infected). YES: The white side is absorbent; it should always be worn next to your mouth to stop droplets from passing through the mask and into the air. YES: The colored side faces out. YES: A number of graphics circulating on social media make this same false claim.

Note: This is a good example of how serious misinformation can be.

NO: The man in the lead photo on this story from the “satirical news” website Viral Cocaine did not “drop dead” on the street in New York City’s borough of Queens. YES: The photos show a man who appears to have collapsed on the sidewalk in Flushing, Queens, on March 3. YES: He was wearing a surgical mask. NO: The incident was not related to COVID-19.

Note: Photos and videos of people who are unwell in public, along with speculation about COVID-19 as the cause, will almost certainly continue to circulate on social media. For example, a man passed out on a train platform in Brussels prompted several bystanders to shoot video of the incident and to speculate that the new strain of coronavirus was the cause.

False risks, false cures

NO: COVID-19 does not cause pulmonary fibrosis (scarring of the lungs). NO: Holding your breath for 10 seconds is not a reliable test for pulmonary fibrosis — or for COVID-19. YES: Drinking water is generally good for you, and proper hydration is important during treatment for any infection. NO: Frequently drinking water does not prevent infection from the current strain of coronavirus by washing the virus into your stomach.

Note: Like many viral rumors, this one includes a request to “send and share” this falsehood to “family, friends and everyone.” You should be skeptical of user-generated material that cites sources that are anonymous or unfamiliar, especially if it explicitly asks you to share it widely.

Also note: There are numerous “copy-and-paste” style viral rumors — many of them citing second- or third-hand advice from an authoritative source — circulating via social media, email and text message about the virus.

Also note: There are at least a dozen iterations of this “advice” circulating online, including one that says it is from an “internal message” to the “Stanford Hospital Board.” In a post on March 11, Stanford Health Care debunked this (scroll to the bottom of the webpage).

Here are just two recent examples of the coronavirus ‘infodemic’ related to the outbreak:

Panic buying not staged by media

NO: A mainstream media (MSM) news outlet did not stage evidence of COVID-19 panic by removing goods from shelves in a grocery store. YES: The Romanian TV news program Observator did use video of empty store shelves and coolers in a report on Feb. 26 about people buying large quantities of specific items to prepare for a possible outbreak of the disease. These include flour, canned goods and water. YES: The photo in the post above was taken during a live report broadcast the next day. The news channel whose reporter appears in the photo above has debunked this claim.

Escape from quarantine post a hoax

NO: A man in his early 20s did not escape from a mandatory COVID-19 quarantine on a U.S. military base. NO: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not run this Facebook ad about this nonexistent “escapee.” YES: This ad (note the word “Sponsored”) was purchased by an imposter page named “Covid19” and using the CDC logo.

WHO describes a coronavirus ‘infodemic’

There is far more misinformation about COVID-19 and the strain of coronavirus that causes it than we can adequately address here. For additional coverage of what the World Health Organization has called an “infodemic,” see:

• “Here’s A Running List Of The Latest Disinformation Spreading About The Coronavirus” (Jane Lytvynenko, BuzzFeed News).
• “Surge of Virus Misinformation Stumps Facebook and Twitter” (Sheera Frenkel, Davey Alba and Raymond Zhong, The New York Times).
• “In Facebook groups, coronavirus misinformation thrives despite broader crackdown” (Brandy Zadrozny, NBC News).

Questions for discussion in the classroom

Why do you think rumors like this have appeal? What journalism standards and ethic policies address the authenticity of photos and video footage?

NO: More than a third of Americans are not avoiding Corona beer because of the current outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by a newly identified strain of coronavirus.

YES: A telephone survey of 737 American beer drinkers conducted on Feb. 25 and 26 by 5W Public Relations, a New York City agency, found that 38% of those surveyed (or 280 respondents) “would not buy Corona under any circumstances now.”

NO: A Feb. 27 press release publicizing the survey contains no evidence that the COVID-19 outbreak is the reason that any of those 280 people would not buy Corona beer right now.

YES: The press release also cites an “uptick in searches for ‘corona beer virus’ and ‘beer coronavirus’ over the past few weeks.”

YES: There is a genre of humorous memes that make puns about the virus and beer. Some joke that the beer is an antidote to the virus.

Related:

• “What the Dubious Corona Poll Reveals” (Yascha Mounk, The Atlantic).
• “Corona claps back at claims coronavirus scare will hurt sales” (Josh Noel, Chicago Tribune).

NO: This map does not show day-to-day levels of sulfur dioxide (a toxic gas) in Wuhan, China. YES: It is a visualization of a NASA estimate based on past data created by Windy.com, a company that provides interactive weather forecasting services. NO: This is not evidence that mass cremations are being carried out in Wuhan.

NO: You cannot catch the new strain of coronavirus (COVID-19) from the air in bubble wrap.

Note: This rumor is surprisingly widespread on Twitter.

A social media post showed Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes wearing a shirt with doctored text. The doctored image included the words “The Great State of Kansas” printed on an outline of the state of Missouri.

What he actually wore

Mahomes wore a shirt that said “SHOWTIME” with his jersey number (15) in the original photo. His agent  tweeted the photo  after the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl on Sunday, Feb. 2.

Prompted by Trump tweet

President Donald Trump made an error in a tweet after the Super Bowl on Feb. 2, saying that the champion Kansas City Chiefs “represented the Great State of Kansas…so very well.” Trump deleted the tweet and corrected the mistake in a second tweet less than 12 minutes later.

Take note

The websites Trump Twitter Archive and Factba.se archive Trump’s tweets, including those that have been deleted.

NO: A McDonald’s employee in Junction City, Kansas, did not write “f*cking pig” on a police officer’s coffee cup. YES: A 23-year-old officer with the Herington Police Department would later say he wrote the expletive on his own coffee cup as a “joke.”

YES: The department’s police chief believed the officer’s initial claim that a McDonald’s employee was responsible for the slur and posted about the incident on Facebook, drawing national attention and news coverage..”  YES: The officer resigned on Dec. 30 after McDonald’s reviewed video footage of the order being served, which showed that no restaurant employee wrote on the officer’s cup.

Oklahoma incident

A police officer did receive a coffee with “pig” on the order label at a Starbucks in Kiefer, Oklahoma, in November.

In need of correction?

The New York Post, which is one of several news outlets that published reports about the staged incident, has published follow-up articles, but has yet to publish an editor’s note or other correction on its original story.

NO: The person shooting a rifle in this video is not 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg. YES: She is Emmy Slinge, a 31-year-old engineer in Sweden (the page is in Swedish.)

NOTE: If you use Google’s Chrome browser, Google will offer to translate pages written in languages other than English You can also use translate.google.com.

ALSO NOTE: The claim that the video showed Thunberg shooting the rifle was an especially popular meme in Brazil, and Comprova, a fact-checking initiative supported by four news organizations there, was the first to debunk it (the page is in Portuguese). A reporter from Estadão, one of the news outlets involved with Comprova, contacted Slinge to confirm that she was the person in the video.

Resource: Comprova used the InVid fake news debunker browser extension to find the source video.

A “satirical” story  falsely claimed that two children of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, were arrested and charged with arson for a nonexistent fire at the nonexistent St. Christopher’s Church of Allod in Maine.

Bustatroll.org, one of a network of satire sites run by the self-proclaimed “liberal troll” Christopher Blair, originally published this piece in July. Blair frequently provokes incautious readers online. In this post, he uses the word “Allod” in the name of the non-existent church. “Allod” is an acronym for “America’s Last Line of Defense,” another of Blair’s sites.

The item about Omar’s children has been copied (and in some cases plagiarized) by a number of clickbait sites seeking ad revenue. Links to the stories continue to be shared online, and many of those sites do not label the item as satire.

For teachers

Blair publishes absurd falsehoods, which he prominently labels as satire, but does so to troll and mock conservatives. Is this a legitimate form of “satire”? Why or why not?

If Blair’s obviously labeled pieces get mistaken as actual news, who is at fault? Is it unethical for Blair to profit from his satire through ad placements on his websites? Is it unethical for digital ad brokers to place ads on Blair’s sites? On sites that plagiarize Blair’s work?

Partisans in the United States certainly have no monopoly on editing or manipulating videos and other content to make their political opponents look bad. Take this recent example from the United Kingdom.

In an appearance Nov. 5 on Good Morning Britain, Keir Starmer, a member of Parliament and the Labour Party’s shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, did not refuse to answer, or fail to answer, a question about his party’s position on Brexit — the process by which the nation will leave the European Union (“Britain” + “exit” =  “Brexit”). It was approved by British voters in 2016.

Just kidding?

The official Facebook page for the Conservative Party, which currently holds power, posted an edited version of the interview that made Starmer appear to be stumped by a question from Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan. The full footage of the interview, available on the program’s YouTube channel, shows that Starmer promptly answered Morgan’s question.

The day after the Conservative Party posted its video on Facebook, the party’s chairman, James Cleverly, in three separate interviews described the doctored video as “humorous,” “light-hearted” and “satirical.”

For discussion in the classroom:

• Should Facebook flag this post for its fact-checking partners?
• Should it demote it in the platform’s algorithm to stop it from spreading widely?
• Should political parties be held to the same community standards on social media as other users?
• Is it important for people to be able to see examples of a political figure or party engaging in misleading spin or fabrications?
• Do you think tactics like this ultimately help or hurt the politicians and political parties that use them?

This week in The Sift® we examine several viral rumors related to the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder and leader of the Islamic State terrorist organization. Here’s our rundown:

Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, did not cry, praise or offer condolences to the family of al-Baghdadi after he killed himself on Oct. 27 during a U.S. military raid. A “satirical news” website — Genesius Times — published a fictional piece last week based on this claim.  The photo of Omar used in the Genesius Times item (and in the Facebook post above) is from a news conference in April.

Note: While the Genesius Times’ tagline provides a prominent disclaimer in its header about the site’s lack of credibility (“The most reliable source of fake news on the planet”), the comments about this item on social media and on the website suggest that a significant number of people believed it.

Also note: The Genesius Times website contains ads placed by RevContent, a digital ad broker, and claims to be a participant in an affiliate advertising program run by Amazon.

Discuss: Does this website count as satire? Is its style of satire ethical?

The man on the right is not Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He is Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a nonprofit organization that advocates for democracy in Syria. Moustafa posted this selfie to his Instagram account in May 2016 after meeting with then-House Speaker Paul Ryan to discuss the situation of civilians in Syria.

CNN did not describe Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an “unarmed father of three” on a chyron during a news broadcast. CNN did not refer to the terrorist leader as a “brave ISIS freedom fighter” on screen during a broadcast. The image of CNN anchor Don Lemon in this fake screenshot is not from October 2019. It has been around since at least December 2018.

Note: As the fact check from Snopes points out, this fake screenshot appears to be an allusion to a headline on The Washington Post’s website that referred to Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar,” prompting sharp criticism.

Discuss: Do you think that this fake screenshot was created as a joke? Is there evidence that it tricked people who saw it online? Why do people manipulate screenshots of newscasts? Once a fake screenshot is created, can it be controlled online? What direct or indirect effects might this fake screenshot have when someone mistakes it as authentic?

Every day doctored images pop up on social media — and often go viral thanks to their provocative content. Take these two examples from the past week:

This image of Donald Trump with his parents, Mary and Fred, is not authentic. The Ku Klux Klan robes were added to a photo that was taken in 1994.

Faked face covering

People are not allowed to cover their faces for a driver’s license photo in Ontario, Canada. The photo seen in the Facebook post — of a woman wearing a face veil — was added to an image of a sample Ontario driver’s license. This rumor isn’t new; it was debunked by Snopes in 2015.

The same doctored image also appeared in 2017 in a false report by a Russian radio station that claimed it was from Brazil.

For teachers

In the first photo (Trump and his parents), what emotions does this claim elicit? How can emotions override rational responses to information?

In the case of the doctored driver’s license photo, why might this false image have recirculated in October 2019? What was happening in Canada at that time? Do you think that it will circulate again? Why or why not?