Fact Check: Climate change protest video passed off as Indian reporters faking deaths of Ukrainians
A video of a man speaking in front of a camera while an array of body bags lay behind him is circulating on social media. It is being claimed that the video shows Indian reporters faking the death of Ukrainians.
By Newsmeter Network Published on 4 March 2022 2:31 PM GMT
Hyderabad: A video of a man speaking in front of a camera while an array of body bags lay behind him is circulating on social media. It is being claimed that the video shows Indian reporters faking the death of Ukrainians.
In the video, while the man speaks, we can see one of the bodies behind him move. It is being claimed that it is a staged video to evacuate Indian citizens from Ukraine. We can see the logo of News 24 and the man is talking in Hindi about the situation of Indian citizens in Ukraine.
Some Facebook users are claiming that people were asked to lie down and covered with sheets to show that there are hundreds of dead bodies in Ukraine.
Fact Check:
NewsMeter found a longer version of the same video uploaded on YouTube by Austria-based channel OE24.TV dated 4 February 2022. The description of this video reads, "Vienna: Demonstration against climate policy."
OE24.TV had also carried the same video in an article. The video also shows people holding banners that translate to "Climate Protection Act saves lives" and "Current climate policies don't."
This clearly shows that the Austrian video was cropped to add the News 24 logo and the Hindi audio was added too.
According to the video, the reporter is Marvin Bergauer. Bergauerhad issued a clarification stating that the video report was about climate policy in Austria and had nothing to do with the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Via Instagram and Facebook, Bergauer clarified, "A few weeks ago, a video in which I talk about a Fridays for Future Vienna protest went viral. According to a new study, there will be 49 climate deaths in Austria in the future. FFF participants expressed this symbolically by depicting themselves as corpses and lying on the ground. One of these 'corpses' wanted to stand up briefly while I was reporting."
He said that the video is being shared with the claim that this was proof that Russians were not as brutal as the Western media. "It's beyond my comprehension how millions of people believe everything they see on social media without context," Bergauer wrote.
Clearly, the viral video has nothing to do with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis.
