Factcheck: Morphed screengrab of Rana Ayyub's CNN interview shared with false claim
By Vamsi Krishna Pothuru Published on 31 Oct 2020 6:00 AM GMT
A purported screengrab of Rana Ayyub's CNN interview with a scroll reading, "You cannot hate all the Muslims for just two beheadings", has become viral on social media.
This screengrab is shared widely in the context of the recent Nice Church Attack, where one woman was beheaded, and two others were killed. This incident is a second such attack followed by the murder of Samuel Patty in a similar manner by a Muslim refugee in the suburb of Paris on October 16.
A Twitter user shared the alleged screengrab along with the caption, "#NiceTerrorAttack, Can @Twitter please block this Person. She is spreading hatred and violence. @RanaAyyub is a threat to Society. #MuslimTerrorists #Islamic_Terrorist."
The same screengrab shared widely on Facebook.
Fact check:
This screengrab is edited and taken from Rana Ayyub's CNN interview about Delhi riots from March 2020. Rana Ayyub did not make any such statements on the Paris beheadings, and she issued clarification dismissing the viral screen grab as a malicious campaign against her.
Based on the contents of the screengrab, Newsmeter performed a keyword search using the terms 'CNN', 'Rana Ayyub' and came across a Tweet by CNN dated back to March 1, 2020. The tweet contains a video of the interview with Rana Ayyub on the issue of Delhi riots earlier this year.
Newsmeter compared both viral screen grabs and the CNN video from March this year.
| Viral Screengrab | Screengrab from CNN interview |
 |  |
Comparison of both screengrabs made it clear that the image has been edited and apart from the heading all the elements are the same including the time at the bottom left corner. The text "You cannot hate all the Muslims for just two beheadings" replaced the original heading "Dozens killed in Delhi's worst sectarian violence in decades."
This same video can be seen on the official website of CNN. The video captioned as "On GPS: Delhi's worst sectarian violence in decades. Rana Ayyub tells Fareed about what's spurring the latest violent riots in New Delhi. Fareed Zakaria, GPS. Source: CNN."
Rana Ayyub tweeted a clarification about this morphed screen grab and condemned it as disinformation propagated by the Right-wing groups against her.
Finally, it is evident from both the CNN report and visual analysis that the screengrab in circulation is edited and Rana Ayyub did not make any such statements about the recent Paris beheadings. Therefore the claim on social media is FALSE.
