Newsletter #16: Putin's h̶e̶a̶r̶t̶ attack, space in a Hollywood basement and the battle against AI-generated images continues
Welcome to Newsgathering. I am Derek Bowler, a digital verification journalist and OSINT investigations specialist based in Geneva, Switzerland.
This newsletter aims to help journalists, researchers, and anyone interested in the news to develop the skills and knowledge needed to verify information accurately and effectively.
Each week we highlight the important stories making the headlines in visual forensics and verification, fact-checking and OSINT best practices over the past seven days and provide a platform for others to share their work in these areas.
Anyway... on with the show!
A Week in Fact-Checks
AI-generated images shared to claim Vladimir Putin suffered a heart attack
Starting this week over at The Quint, Abhishek Anand debunked images purporting to show Russian President Vladimir Putin suffering a heart attack, reporting the images were generated using the AI tool Midjourney.
"A keyword search in Russian led us to a tweet thread carrying similar visuals. The thread was uploaded by a user named Misha Petrov. It was uploaded on 22 March. Petrov clarified that the images were generated by the AI tool Midjourney," Anand reported.
No, video does not show an astronaut faking being in space
Anna Mock of Check Your Fact debunked a video claiming to show astronaut Tim Peake in front of a green screen simulating space.
Mock reports: "The original video of Peake was also uploaded to YouTube in 2016 and shows him conducting an experiment with a ball on a string in zero gravity. The grid behind him has both its y and x axis labeled one through 10. It was not used as a green screen, but to track the ball’s movements."
Did U.S. fund biolab in Sudan?
At Newsweek, Tom Norton investigated a claim made in a tweet that "The US needs to rethink its policy of funding biolabs in countries like Ukraine and Sudan. Sudanese fighters have just seized a U.S.-funded biolab in Khartoum and the WHO is warning of a 'germ bomb'."
"The claims on Twitter were based on an article published by Steve Bannon's War Room which mistook Sudan for South Sudan, a completely different country. While the U.S. has financed other organisations which have in turn supported the National Public Health Laboratory in Khartoum, and directly funded COVID-19 resources for the laboratory, there is no evidence to support the claim that the lab is a U.S.-funded bio lab, in the sense the tweets and the article imply," Norton reports.
Guardian columnist did not write about having COVID 23 times
The Reuters Fact Check team looked into a headline shared on social media suggesting that The Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote about catching COVID 23 times and being thankful to be vaccinated.
"A spokesperson for The Guardian said in an email that the article depicted by the screenshot has never been a published headline, or story, at the publication. There is no record of the article on Monbiot’s Guardian author page, which shows that he has published two columns in May, including one on water pollution, on May 3, and another on police arrests during King Charles’ coronation, on May 12 (here). Monbiot has tweeted that the headline is fake (here)," Reuters reported.
Is Will Smith playing Hitler in a new Netflix series?
Nur Ibrahim of Snopes.com was on the case of a series of images purporting to show actor Will Smith dressed in a Nazi uniform as he prepares to play Adolf Hitler in an upcoming Netflix series.
"Reverse-image results did not show any examples of the images other than those in random social media posts, and a post on the AI image-generation site PlaygroundAI that appeared to be created on May 2, 2023. The image in which Smith was making a fist also showed him with six knuckles. As we have noted before, extra fingers or lips are often a characteristic of AI-generated images," Ibrahim reported.
Video of 2022 London protest misrepresented after the arrest of former Pakistani PM
Over at The Associated Press, Karena Phan investigated a video purported to show protesters packing the street outside former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s London home in response to the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
"...the video is from a protest that took place outside the building on April 17, 2022, after Khan was ousted in a parliamentary no-confidence vote a week earlier. Sharif’s brother, Shahbaz Sharif, then became Pakistan’s prime minister.
Longer versions of the same footage were posted to social media on April 17, 2022. Several similar photos of the protest were also posted on Twitter the same day. The video and these images show key similarities, such as two black cars in the exact same place on the street," Phan writes.
Recommended Reading
#Faktenfuchs: Why some regions of the earth are warming up faster
Over at Bayerischer Rundfunk, Julia Ley and Sophie Menner expanded on the organisation's reporting that some regions of the earth are warming up faster than others - a claim disputed by some readers.
"Bayreuth, representative of Upper Franconia, is actually warming up about two to three times as fast as the rest of the world. The basis for this statement is the so-called warming rate, which extrapolates the temperature increase over 100 years. This is significantly lower in the rest of the world, mainly because "the rest of the world" also contains many water masses. And water warms up much more slowly than land. So the statement is correct – but it also applies to many other German cities in a comparable location," the pair report.
For the Audiophiles
In this episode of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Leadership podcast, Ramaa Sharma is joined by Anup Kaphle to look at how newsroom environments can foster or hinder the search for authenticity.
For your calendar
June 8: The InVID-WeVerify verification toolbox, European Digital Media Observatory
New Horizons
Are you looking for new pastures? Here are some of the opportunities that caught my eye this week.
Assistant Foreign Editor, The Telegraph - London, England, United Kingdom (On-site)
Managing Editor, BBC.com, BBC Studios - New York, NY
Head of Investigations, The Guardian US - New York, NY (Hybrid)
Deputy Editor, National News, Newsweek - New York, NY (Remote)
All-Source Investigator, Deloitte - Washington, DC (Hybrid)
Investigative Producer, ABC7 Chicago, IL (On-site)
Intelligence Analyst II - EIS, Crisis24 - Singapore, Singapore
Navy - Counter Intelligence Threats Advisor, UK Ministry of Defence Faslane, Scotland, United Kingdom (On-site)
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See you all next week.