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Anatomy of a Fact-Check: NewsMobile Debunks a False Coronavirus Video
“Anatomy of a Fact-Check” is an interview series with fact-checking organizations that participate in Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program. Here, a leader of NewsMobile, founder and editor-in-chief Saurabh Shukla, explains how the team debunked a recent false claim that spread on social media.
Part One: A False Claim Spreads
Around March 15, a video started to spread claiming that a group of men tried to purposefully spread coronavirus to more than 2,000 people who attended a religious gathering in Nizamuddin, India. The event itself was a fact, it did happen, but the video showed men purportedly licking utensils that would be used by other people there — and it capitalized on fears of a spike in the number of coronavirus cases in the country.
“The video led to a lot of backlash against the Tablighi Jamaat Muslim community, and people accused them of deliberately spreading coronavirus," Shukla said. "As responsible fact-checkers, it was our prime responsibility to bust the fake news and educate thousands of people about the misinformation, particularly when the world faced a global pandemic."
Part Two: An Insider’s Guide to Fact-Checking, Step by Step
- ‘We fact-checked the video and found it was old.’ NewsMobile extracted keyframes of the video and put them through Reverse Image Search. They found the same video was uploaded to Vimeo on July 31, 2018.
- ‘We identified the people in the video.’The Vimeo caption explained these were members of India's Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, who follow a tradition of communal dining.
- ‘We verified the information in other reputable sources.’NewsMobile also found an article about Bohra food and traditions. Corroborating the Vimeo caption’s description of communal dining, the article showed a similar image of people sitting and eating together. At this point, even though NewsMobile could not independently verify the video's origin, the team confirmed the video was unrelated to COVID-19 and therefore false news.
Part Three: Impact of a Successful Fact-Check
After NewsMobile applied a label to debunk the claim, Facebook published an overlay that appears over the video anytime it appears on our platforms. It informs people the video contains false information and invites them to click to read NewsMobile's article to learn more.
"We think people who shared the viral, misleading video were overly sensitive to COVID-19 during this difficult time," Shukla said. "This fact-check taught us the importance of gathering more and more information related to the element in question to verify the claims. It also brought to the fore that local sensitivities and the clear and present danger of lives getting lost should always be on our minds, when we prioritise a fact-check."
Learn more about Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program.
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