WEBVTT

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On August 4th, there was a massive
explosion at the port in Beirut, Lebanon.

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(Explosions)

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Cellphones caught the blast
from almost every angle.

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Videos spread through social media and
messaging platforms almost immediately.

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Some were real, some were manipulated.

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A few appeared to show a missile
striking just before the blast.

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(Explosions)

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These videos were doctored.

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When investigative
reporter Emmanuelle Saliba

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received one of those videos
from a source in Beirut,

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she knew she had to get to work.

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As an investigative reporter,

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my role is to try and figure out
what caused the explosion in this case.

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So I got in touch with someone
who owns a business at the port of Beirut.

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His family has been
operating there for 40 years.

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And in this exchange he said:
"Let me send you a video."

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"I think a missile caused the explosion."

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I was already pretty skeptical

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because I had seen some fairly easily
debunkable videos out there.

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So what we're looking at here is the first
video that came out that was manipulated.

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What's interesting in this case is -

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it's an original witness video,

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so we're actually seeing the scene,

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but what the person did
was add a missile.

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And I'll show you the original
video, which is this one.

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(Car honking)

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(Explosions)

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What's great now about
what's happening online

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is that as soon as a
manipulated video comes out,

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there're so many journalists
who are trained to do this,

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that very quickly they're being debunked.

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So a colleague at the BBC who focuses
on disinformation, he debunked it.

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And we're all sort of, you know, 
even though we work for different outlets,

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all looking at each other's work
and helping each other out.

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So I had that in my head when
I was talking to my source,

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and I thought, "You know, we've
already debunked a video.

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I'm pretty skeptical about this one."

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"Send it to me."

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He sent it to me through WhatsApp and he 
said he got it form friends and families.

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You know, imagine his business has been
destroyed, they want answers.

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They wanna know what caused the explosion.

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I looked at the video
and it's an infrared video.

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I'm gonna show you a version
that is here, that still lives on Twitter.

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I'll play it for you so you can see.

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(Explosions)

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You can tell that these are two videos
that have been edited together

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to make it appear as if
it's one continuous shot.

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But just by looking at it,
anyone could sort of see that

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they're taken from two different angles.

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There's also this thermal imaging layer
which is a bit strange,

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considering that the video
camera falls to the floor

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and you can see it was
taken by a human being.

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What human being has an infrared camera?

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This is a professional piece of gear.

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Right. The video's shaky.

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No security footage would've
come out that quickly

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given the strength of the explosion.

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So you just start, like, 
piecing these things together.

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I recognized this first shot

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and I knew that it was taken
by a social media editor

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who was actually on the ground,
who works for CNN.

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And here's the original video.

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You see, it doesn't have that filter.

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And when you play it out,

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(Explosions)

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you can see that there isn't a missile
that comes through the sky and hits.

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So that was added.

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I spoke to him and he said,

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"Yeah, my video was taken, manipulated.

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And I kept getting all these emails
about the supposed missile in my video"

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which you can see isn't there.

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And quickly after, Twitter
actually put out an event

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to show that fact checkers had concluded

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that the video of the Beirut explosion was
doctored and it included a fake missile.

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And they featured my tweet
and my thread I did on it,

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and they also featured
a few other reporters

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that had also been doing a
similar type of debunking work.

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So it's important for us to really
be quite quick to dismiss these

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and quite quick to debunk them

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and really show people
how we do it, right?

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It's easy to say this isn't real,

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but we need people to understand
why and how it's not real.

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So I actually wrote back to him
and I laid out my steps and said,

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"Here's how I know it's not real."

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And he's like, "Okay, 
that's so great to know.

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I'm gonna tell my friends
and my family."

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And it's really helpful, I think if you're
an individual, to create a list

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with all of these different journalists,

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so that you can monitor
them during breaking news.

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Build your own little stable of experts
that you trust, that are verified,

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and that way you might see
that what you're about to share

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actually showed up here
as something that you shouldn't.

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Exactly.

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The August 4th blast in
Beirut was devastating.

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Lives were lost.
Thousands were injured.

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Billions of dollars of damage was done.

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We all wanted to know how did this happen.

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We got explanations immediately.

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But reliable news takes time.

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So what do we do when information
travels faster than facts?

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Build a list like Emmanuelle recommends.

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Find journalists you
trust and follow them.

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Then when big news breaks -

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and if 2020 has taught us anything,
it most surely will break -

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you'll already know who to go to.

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Until next time. Keep it real. 
Don't spread fake news.

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I'm Hari Sreenivasan
and this is Take On Fake.

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Thanks for watching.

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For more indepth
investigations like this one,

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follow our guest Emmanuelle
Saliba on Twitter.

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You can find a link in the description.

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Let us know what you think in comments
and don't forget to subscribe,

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so you know when the next 
episode of TakeOnFake drops.