Is it true that the “non-mainstream press” in the United States admitted the White House’s guilt in the Nord Stream explosions?

In October 2022, a cover of an American magazine spread on social networks, on the basis of which Internet users made an unambiguous conclusion: at least some of the local media recognize the actions of the US authorities as the cause of explosions on a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. We have verified the accuracy of such messages.

In early October, social media users published the cover of the latest “special issue” of Mad magazine. The people depicted on it: US President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and a red-haired smiling boy in a T-shirt with the inscription “I love gas” - repeated the famous antique statue, depicting how snakes sent by Poseidon strangle the Trojan soothsayer Laocoon and his two sons. The snakes on the cover were played by gas pipes covered with Russian flags. At the same time, Zelensky throws his right hand up, and the red-haired boy holds a burning lighter in his hands. “Of course it was Biden. He just forgot,” the image caption reads.

Considering that at the end of September there were explosions on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, and on September 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused in them "Anglo-Saxons", a number of Internet users decided that at least part of the American press, represented by Mad magazine, does not hide its agreement with such an assessment.

In a similar context, the alleged cover of Mad magazine was distributed, in particular, by Telegram channels “Peacemaker" (787,000 subscribers at the time of writing this analysis) and "Release the Kraken!» (283,000 subscribers), as well as users Facebook* And Twitter.

Mad magazine, which some Internet users have called "non-mainstream American press," is indeed not one of the largest media outlets in the United States. However, it cannot be classified as a journalistic, academic or analytical publication - Mad appeared in the middle of the last century as a series of comics and only later became a magazine. However, its basis - satirical, topical cartoon stories - remains the same. Since 2019, the magazine's issues have been almost entirely consist from reprints of old materials under freshly drawn covers. The boy pictured on the proposed cover with Biden and Zelensky is Alfred E. Newman, a recurring character in these comics.

We could not find the image distributed in Telegram channels and public pages website, nor on Mad Magazine’s social networks. The publication also did not announce any special issues at the end of October. Released earlier this month was called The Para(ab) Normal Issue, its cover features a little girl and a television. The next issue (timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the publication) will be published only two months later; its cover is already announced — it shows the boy Alfred E. Newman's "dentures" placed in a glass on his bedside table.

Our colleagues from the Georgian project Factcheck.ge contacted the editors of Mad Magazine with a request to comment on the image that had spread on social networks. American edition reported, that its authors and artists have nothing to do with the “cover”. Let's add that at the bottom of the original Mad Magazine covers located barcode missing from the viral image.

The earliest publication with a fake cover that we were able to detect appeared, according to the TGStat service, on the afternoon of October 3. Drawing posted in her Telegram channel, media manager and former commissar of the Russian pro-government youth movement “Nashi” Kristina Potupchik (in June she posted photographs of “Russophobic” stickers allegedly posted in Auschwitz). The publication is accompanied by an image of the sculpture, and Potupchik explains that the “cover” contains a “subtle reference” to ancient Greek legend: “The father saved his sons from snakes, and in the end both father and sons died.” Let us note that the author of the post does not present Mad as a serious journalistic publication, however, he does not specify that it is a magazine with satirical comics (which does not change the fact that the issue with such a cover was not published in principle).

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities on Russian territory are prohibited.

Cover photo: Telegram

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Factcheck.ge. Disinformation: the American press admitted that the terrorist attacks on Nord Stream were carried out by the United States
2. Is the Time cover about Vladimir Zelensky refusing to use the letters V and Z real?
3. Is the front page of a Polish newspaper true, reporting that Zelensky will “give Ukraine to Poland”?
4. Is it true that Vogue magazine published a photograph of Hitler and Eva Braun in 1939?
5. Is it true that Joe Biden gave a veteran a medal backwards?