People unknown to you often tweet, email or text you videos from “news events.” But do you know if they are legit? Was the video from today or five years ago? Was the video doctored? How can we see when and where a video was first published? We’ll explore how with Watch Frame-by-Frame and Amnesty International’s YouTube Dataviewer.

WatchFramebyFrame.com
http://www.watchframebyframe.com/watch/yt/Xb0P5t5NQWM
Great for fact-checking videos. Paste URL into player and hit the arrow keys to look at each shot frame by frame. Watch for shadows out of place, etc. You also can watch frame by frame in YouTube by using the comma and period keys after pausing the video. Comma moves backward and period forward.

Exercise: Test both tools with this famous fake video of a bird trying to fly off with a kid. It was passed off as real and went viral. Watch the shadows of the bird and the kid for clues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE0Q904gtMI

ABC News story explaining how to tell it’s fake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVr43I16B3Q

YouTube Dataviewer
https://citizenevidence.amnestyusa.org/
From Amnesty International, plug a YouTube video URL in and see where the video has been published through reverse lookup of video frames.

Verification Handbook

Case studies and examples of how to verify photos, video and other news.

Tips for spotting deep fakes from Norton
https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-emerging-threats-how-to-spot-deepfakes.html

More fact-checking tools on Journalist’s Toolbox: https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/category/trust-and-verification/

We’ll give you three photos to fact-check with context shared (for real) on social media about each photo. Your job is to reverse image search each photo to see if the context is accurate or if the photo has been misrepresented. Answers will be at the end of the video. No peeking!

Google Image Search: Check where and when an image was first posted to the web
–https://images.google.com

Tineye.com: Similar to Google Image Search but produces some different results
–https://tineye.com/

Link to the fact-checking exercise: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xWNFQ5SV4xYiBhtAQEr1GCdEk8vxyF5Z?usp=sharing

More fact-checking tools on Journalist’s Toolbox: https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/category/trust-and-verification/

People unknown to you often tweet, email or text you photos from “news events.” But do you know if they are legit? Was the photo from today or five years ago? Was the photo doctored? How can we see when and where a photo was first published? We’ll explore how with Google Image Search, TinEye and FotoForensics.

Google Image Search: Check where and when an image was first posted to the web
–https://images.google.com

Tineye.com: Similar to Google Image Search but produces some different results
–https://tineye.com/

FotoForensics: Breakdown meta-data and detect layering on news photos
–http://fotoforensics.com

More fact-checking tools on Journalist’s Toolbox: https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/category/trust-and-verification/

The first of a four-part series on fact-checking, we introduce you to some basic tools like Google Fact Check Explorer, Google Earth, the Verification Handbook and First Draft News resources. We’ll show you some practical ways these tools and resources can help you in your quest to verify the news.

Google Fact Check Explorer: https://toolbox.google.com/factcheck/explorer

Google Earth: https://www.google.com/earth/

First Draft News: https://firstdraftnews.org/

Verification Handbook: https://datajournalism.com/read/handbook/verification-1

More fact-checking tools on Journalist’s Toolbox: https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/category/trust-and-verification/