In June 2023, a video appeared on the Internet, allegedly released by the Al Jazeera television channel, which talked about Ukrainians who accused the crew of the missing deep-sea vehicle of wasting money. We have verified the accuracy of this video.
The one-and-a-half-minute video with the Al Jazeera logo in the upper left corner began circulating on the Internet on June 22. The video says that June 19 (actually 18th) the Titan submersible, owned by the OceanGate company and heading to the sunken liner Titanic, disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean. On board was five people, and the cost of an eight-day expedition for three tourists was $250,000 each. According to calculations, the oxygen supply could only last until June 22 - on this day there were discovered the wreckage of the Titan, the nature of which testifies about critical damage to the device. At that time all its passengers were announced dead. Six days later, the US Coast Guard reported, which received debris raised from the ocean floor and discovered remains believed to belong to the people on board.
The video says that numerous Ukrainian social media users "raised a wave of outrage" due to the "wastefulness... of tourists and the crew of the submersible." “Ukraine needs help while these people spend fortunes on stupid entertainment”, “$250,000 to look at a sunken ship? I’m not surprised that they disappeared,” “While they are having fun, we are literally drowning here. I hope they don’t get caught” - such comments from supposedly Ukrainians are given in the alleged Al Jazeera video.
Publications with viral videos appeared in the Telegram channels “Ostashko! Important” (and twice: 111,000 And 101,000 views at the time of writing this analysis; clarified that the news was sent by a subscriber), "Uncle Slava" (176,000), "Army Z 18+ 🔥 News 🔥"(159,000), "Tsargrad-TV"(150,000), "Bullet" (146,000), "Sheikh Tamir" (143,000), "Alexander Semchenko"(85,000), "Tough of the day"(85,000), "Yakov Kedmi"(81,000), "DPR 🅉 info 🇷🇺" (68,000), "Nina Vatt 🇷🇺" (37,000), "Batkovich" (27,000) and "Before everyone else. Well almost. Special operation"(11,000). Similar posts can be found on VKontakte (examples here, here And here), Twitter (here, here, here And here) And TikTok.
The viral video does not include the names or nicknames of the Ukrainian users who allegedly left the quoted comments criticizing the Titan crew. Moreover, the video does not even mention specific social networks in which the “wave of indignation” allegedly arose, and also does not show screenshots of such comments.
Neither “Verified” nor our agency colleagues Reuters and fact-checking projects StopFake And Lead Stories It was not possible to find a video with such a story on the official resources of Al Jazeera. Thus, a video about complaints from Ukrainians about the dead crew of the Titan is not available in English-language Twitter-TV channel accounts (@AJEnglish and @AJENews), as well as in Instagram*, Facebook* and on website TV companies.
Reuters journalists sent a request to the Al Jazeera press service asking for comment on the appearance of the viral video. The TV channel called the report fake. Full answer given on the television company’s website: “A video distributed on social networks allegedly from Al Jazeera, which contains materials about Ukrainians condemning the passengers of the Titan submarine for wasteful spending of money on the expedition, is not genuine. "We want to make it clear that Al Jazeera did not create this video and assert that the content was fabricated by a third party."
In addition, the channel recalled that this is not the first time that the Al Jazeera logo has been used in a fabricated video. So, in November 2022 in social networks and Russian media distributed a fake video about how drunk Ukrainian football fans in Qatar allegedly drew a Hitler mustache on the World Cup mascot and wrote a Nazi salute next to it.
Despite the fact that the authors of the fake copied the color schemes and style of the videos from Al Jazeera’s social networks, the fake can be recognized by another classic sign. The viral video shows a font that is different from what is usually used in Al Jazeera videos. The differences are noticeable in many letters, including J, k, a, t, g and y, as well as other symbols such as numbers, commas and apostrophes.
The earliest publication with a video of those that was discovered by “Verified” ended up in the Telegram channel “Shaman Rahu” (4000 views) - there is a post appeared June 22, 2023 at 09:04 Moscow time. Our regular readers might already remember the name of this channel, since it mentioned in analyzes as the primary source or distributor of fakes, the last time - quite recently in connection with the emergence fake photo Israeli passport of Elena Zelenskaya.
It is noteworthy that later in “Shaman Rahu» and other pro-Russian Telegram channels distributed a fake cover of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, on which Vladimir Zelensky, hiding behind the corpse of a billionaire who sank on the Titan, comes to the bank and asks to transfer the money of the deceased tourist in favor of Ukraine.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Instagram and Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: screenshot “Verified” / social networks
- Is it true that Ukrainians in Qatar painted a Hitler mustache on the 2022 World Cup mascot?
- Is it true that British scientists found Russian roots in the captain of the Titanic?
- Is it true that multimillionaire Alfred Vanderbilt, miraculously missing the Titanic, later died on the Lusitania?
- Is it true that the IOC is going to introduce a quota of at least 10% for LGBT+ athletes at the Olympic Games?
- Is it true that Serbian students proposed naming a black hole after Vladimir Zelensky?
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
