“The television channel France 24 ordered anti-Ukrainian graffiti to blame Russia. » This false accusation has been relayed since at least September 9 on Telegram channels and Russian sites.
In support of this unfounded accusation, a video in French which usurps the identity of 20 minutes. At first glance, the montage, which imitates the graphic codes of our media’s videos, seems authentic: similar music, font close to that of our site… A final panel even includes the signature of a journalist from the editorial team, who did not, however, make this video.
“Even if the style of video [musique, logo, codes couleur, apparition des textes et même générique de fin] corresponds in every way to a news video 20 minutesthis video was not produced by us, reacts Brune Daudré, video editor-in-chief of 20 minutes. It is not in our inventory, and was in no way edited by the journalist cited in the end credits. » Brune Daudré noted an error made by the forgers: “If we look closely at the typography used for the text as well as the animation which makes the text appear, we can clearly see a difference, slight, but a difference nonetheless with our graphic codes. »
As for the content, it bears no resemblance to what our media produces. The video attacks the France 24 channel and one of its journalists, Catalina Marchant de Aubreu, presenter of the fact-checking program Info or intox. The anonymous authors of the video wrongly accuse the channel and the journalist of having had fake graffiti of Volodymyr Zelensky made to “increase the audience” of the channel. They falsely accuse the journalist of having dangled money to a supposed Ukrainian artist who had taken refuge in France, without ever providing the slightest proof of the existence of this man or of this supposed promise. A blurred photo of a man appears in the video, believed to be that of the artist. It is actually that of a man living in Perm, Russia, according to AFP.
Derek Thompson, editor-in-chief‘Info or intox and France 24 Observers, firmly denies the content of the video: “We did not make fake graffiti, our journalist does not know any Ukrainian artist who has taken refuge in France. She has never created false surveys and she has never paid anyone for information! It is even against the charter of France Médias Monde [la maison mère de France 24]. »
Traces of a pro-Russian operation
These accusations made by the anonymous video hijack a fact-checking video from France 24, published on December 8, 2022. At the time, a photo of graffiti showing the Ukrainian president devouring euros was relayed online with a pro-Russian speech : the supposed work would thus have shown the exasperation of Europeans, tired of their leaders’ support for Ukraine. This graffiti would have been painted on a sidewalk in front of a metro exit on the outskirts of Paris.
As demonstrated by France 24, this graffiti relayed online was never painted in this location and the supposed photo bore traces of digital modification.
The fake video impersonating 20 minutes bears the traces of a pro-Russian operation: in addition to its content, it was relayed, according to our research, on several Russian Telegram channels, as well as on the Russian-speaking social network Vk, always with the same elements of language. Russian-speaking news sites also put it online. It is also found on an English-speaking site registered in Russia. On Facebook, the video circulated in Serbo-Croatian – it was AFP Belgrade and France 24 who drew our attention to this video.
20 minutes had already been a victim of the same process in May. Our title then filed a complaint for “identity theft”. A few months earlier, in October 2022, our site had been copied, a process known as “mirroring”. Pro-Russian propaganda texts had been added to this fake site. Other European media had also suffered from this method. This was the work of a Russian disinformation network, according to Meta, which relied on the conclusions of the Digital Forensic Research Laba digital research laboratory, we then remembered.
In June, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in turn denounced a campaign of Russian influence in France, one of the contours of which was the usurpation of the identity of the media. 20 minutes was part of the targeted media.