Busting the top two fake news of the week

Fake news: We see it all over our televisions, in the paper and on the web. The line between journalism and other content has blurred, making it more important than ever for all to verify the facts. The Business Standard is supporting BD FactCheck to publish the real information on the top two fake news that went viral this week.

Fake letter of Trump gone viral

An image of a letter reportedly written by outgoing US President Donald Trump to the new President Joe Biden has gone viral on Facebook last Wednesday. The letter says, "Joe, you know I won", with a White House monogram on top and dated on January 20, 2021. The nature of the short text in the alleged letter garnered much attention on social media in Bangladesh as well as in other countries.

However, BD FactCheck has found the letter to be false. Firstly, Facebook posts haven't mentioned any source of the image. Secondly, it was reported by top US media outlets that Trump had left a letter for Biden in the Oval Office, but the nature of the text remained unpublished. White House officials and Biden himself told reporters that he would not publish the text of the letter until he spoke with Trump. However, the POTUS said Trump had left a 'very generous' text for him, Reuters reported.

Actually, the viral false letter originated from social media memes that tried to imagine sarcastically what could Trump say in his departing letter. Thus the fake letter also has some discrepancies in its design and articulation which was detected by BD FactCheck.

False claim associated with a viral photo

Two photos of a young man jumping towards an uniformed personnel of a law enforcing agency and lifting him up just to flip him down have been shared massively on different Facebook last week. The social media posts claimed that the event depicted in those photos took place recently in Palestine, and the law enforcement official was from Israel.

However, BD FactCheck traced the photo and concluded that it was taken in 2019 during a protest rally in Valparaiso city, Chile. Local newspaper articles and a geolocation investigation of the image confirmed its origin.