On February 24, Russia announced a special military operation in Ukraine with the aim to “demilitarise” the region. Amidst the death and displacement caused by the invasion, a news broadcast is now viral on social media.
In the video, a person comes out of a body bag during a live news broadcast. The video is being shared on social media with claims suggesting that the Ukraine crisis is a staged propaganda by western powers.
Behind the Scenes 😳😳 pic.twitter.com/4JR4by28Y9
— Yo Yo Funny Singh 🇮🇳 (@moronhumor) March 1, 2022
More propaganda by west:
A corpse came back to life during live reporting of human catastrophe by a Polish channel😅😂@srdmk01 pic.twitter.com/TOEesR1bxp— Kshitij 🇮🇳 (@jgdkshitij) March 1, 2022
What’s happening in background ?
😳pic.twitter.com/rzttpZhJAp— Koustuv 🇮🇳 (@srdmk01) March 1, 2022
Some users also claimed that this event is being shot in Poland.
About Ukraine
Attention! A FAKE STORY about a humanitarian catastrophe is being filmed in Poland right now.
Fortunately, the “fake-makers” “screwed up” on the air.
Unfortunately, a lot of videos from this category are expected. pic.twitter.com/tQexRRGR1B— Spriter (@spriter99880) March 1, 2022
The video has been shared with Arabic captions as well.
أوكرانيا تعرض قتلى الروس، بس خلال التصوير واحد من القتلى نسي أنه ميت 😂#روسيا_اوكرانيا pic.twitter.com/jGkE365Elv
— حيتان الكريبتو 🐬🌊 (@rojcoin) February 28, 2022
The video is also viral on Facebook.
Climate protest in Austria
We had a close look at the broadcast and observed that the name of the reporter is visible. Taking that as a clue, we tried to find more information about the journalist. We looked up “Marvin Bergauer” on Google and came across his Instagram profile. Among the countries mentioned on his Instagram bio was Austria.
We performed a keyword search in German and came across a Spanish news article with visuals the same as the viral broadcast. It said that the video showed a protest against climate policy in Austria by Friday’s For Future in Vienna where people played dead but one of the protestors got up and ruined the broadcast.
The news article also mentioned that the viral blooper was released on OE24.TV’s YouTube channel. We performed a keyword search and found the video on YouTube uploaded on February 4. The viral bit starts at 1:20 minutes.
The reporter, Marvin Bergauer, put out a statement last evening on his Instagram profile regarding the viral video. Please note that the statement has been translated using Google Lens and may contain grammatical errors.
We also found that the same video was previously viral as “fake” Covid-19 victims.
Hence, a news broadcast of a protest by Friday’s For Future in Vienna was shared with a misleading claim suggesting that it is “western propaganda” that attempted to show Russia in a bad light.
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