Beirut Explosion: How to Spot a Doctored Video

On August 4th, a massive explosion rocked Beirut, Lebanon's capital city. Videos of the deadly incident immediately swarmed social media—some videos were real while others were doctored. NBC News investigative reporter Emmanuelle Saliba teaches us how to spot these manipulated videos by cross-referencing with trusted sources.

Emmanuelle Saliba: https://twitter.com/_esaliba

Don’t forget to Like & Subscribe: https://bit.ly/3dziPoH

Take on Fake debunks claims you’ve seen or shared online to show you how to stay informed. Host Hari Sreenivasan follows the Internet rabbit hole of misinformation, reading beyond a single headline to find credible sources to uncover the truth.

#TakeOnFake

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

(Explosions)

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.

(Explosions)

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 honking)

(Explosions)

What's great now about
what's happening online

is that as soon as a
manipulated video comes out,

there're 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, you know,
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, "You know, we've
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 form 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.

(Explosions)

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, like,
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,

(Explosions)

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 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.

Thanks for watching.

For more indepth
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 comments
and don't forget to subscribe,

so you know when the next
episode of TakeOnFake drops.