Beirut Explosion: How to Spot a Doctored Video

- On August 4th, there
was a massive explosion

at the port in Beirut, Lebanon.

(explosion rumbles)

Cellphones caught the blast
from almost every angle.

Videos spread through social media

and messaging platforms
almost immediately.

Some were real, some were manipulated.

A few appeared to show a missile striking

just before the blast.

These videos were doctored.

When investigative
reporter Emmanuelle Saliba

received one of those videos
from a source in Beirut,

she knew she had to get to work.

- As an investigative reporter,

my role is to try and figure out

what caused the explosion in this case.

So I got in touch with
someone who owns a business

at the Port of Beirut.

His family has been
operating there for 40 years.

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

"I think a missile caused the explosion."

I was already pretty
skeptical because I had seen

some fairly easily
debunkable videos out there.

So what we're looking at
here is the first video

that came out that was manipulated.

What's interesting in this case

is it's an original witness video,

so we're actually seeing the scene,

but what the person did was add a missile.

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

(car horn honking)

(explosion rumbles)

What's great now about
what's happening online

is that as soon as a
manipulated video comes out,

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

that very quickly they're being debunked.

So a colleague at the BBC who
focuses on disinformation,

he debunked it.

And we're all sort of,

even though we work for different outlets,

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

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

and I thought, "We
already debunked a video,

"I'm pretty skeptical about this one.

"Send it to me."

He sent it to me through WhatsApp

and he said he got it
from friends and families.

You know, imagine his
business has been destroyed,

they want answers,

they wanna know what caused the explosion.

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

I'm gonna show you a version that is here

that still lives on Twitter.

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

You can tell that these are two videos

that have been edited together

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

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

that they're taken from
two different angles.

There's also this thermal imaging layer

which is a bit strange

considering that the video
camera falls to the floor

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

What human being has an infrared camera?

- This is a professional piece of gear.

- Right. The video's shaky.

No security footage would've
come out that quickly

given the strength of the explosion,

so you just start piecing
these things together.

I recognized this first shot

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

who was actually on the
ground who works for CNN.

And here's the original video.

You see it doesn't have that filter

and when you play it out,

(explosion rumbling)

you can see that there isn't a missile

that comes through the sky and hits.

So that was added.

I spoke to him and he said,

"Yeah, my video was taken, manipulated,

and I kept getting all these emails

about the supposed missile in my video,"

which you can see isn't there.

And quickly after, Twitter
actually put out an event

to show that fact checkers had concluded

that the video of the Beirut
explosion was doctored

and it included a fake missile

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

and they also featured
a few other reporters

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

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

to dismiss these and
quite quick to debunk them

and really show people
how we do it, right?

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

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

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

and said, "Here's how
I know it's not real."

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

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

And it's really helpful, I
think, if you're an individual

to create a list with all of
these different journalists

so that you can monitor
them during breaking news.

- Build your own little stable of experts

that you trust, that are verified,

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

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

- Exactly.

- The August 4th blast in
Beirut was devastating.

Lives were lost, thousands were injured,

billions of dollars of damage was done.

We all wanted to know how did this happen.

We got explanations immediately.

But reliable news takes time.

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

Build a list like Emmanuelle recommends.

Find journalists you
trust and follow them.

Then when big news breaks,

and if 2020 has taught us anything,

it most surely will break,

you'll already know who to go to.

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

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

(gentle music)

Thanks for watching.

For more in-depth
investigations like this one,

follow our guest Emmanuelle
Saliba on Twitter.

You can find a link in the description.

Let us know what you think in the comments

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of "Take On Fake" drops.