This video is supposed to show a foul heckling at a children’s book reading by US First Lady Jill Biden.
“When my son was gone, my granddaughter missed her father very much. So I wrote this book to show other children … “
“ZIP your lips!”
“Hey, that’s not nice!”
The video of the cheeky interjection is spreading rapidly in social networks – is viewed and commented on thousands of times.
But the clip is a fake.
The video from Jill Biden is real – but the cheeky interjection did not take place.
An unedited version of the video, without the cheeky interruption, from December 2021 shows that the video has been tampered with. The video is being made as part of the presentation of the White House Christmas decorations.
The interjection comes from a YouTube video from 2019. In the short clip, a child interrupts and insults his teacher. The audio track of this clip and the manipulated Biden clip are the same.
The combination of both recordings creates the impression that the First Lady of the USA was disrespectfully disturbed by a child during her reading. Apparently the fake video was produced to ridicule the wife of the US president.
It is also noticeable that the manipulated video is played back in slow motion at the end – while the sound continues unchanged, in real time. A clear indication that the video has been edited.
The stern fact check makes it clear how easily a new video can be produced from various online sources. This turns a quiet reading into a cheeky incident.
How do we examine videos for manipulation in the editorial office? It is important to take a look at the details. The individual frames of a video often reveal whether a video has been edited. We take a close look at each picture and enlarge individual sections. Indications of a fake are, for example: lack of motion blur, unnatural shadows or cutting errors. At stern, the general rule is: Seriousness over speed. We always double-check facts and material carefully before we publish them. To do this, we work with the cross-editorial “Verification Team” together with RTL, NTV, RTL2, and Radio NRW.