a lot of the pictures we're seeing out
of Iran are coming through social media
no surprise there but it's the risk of
rolling out this overused phrase Zara
fake news is what we're seeing Evan take
us through what you've been
disseminating from all of this
absolutely in fact come all the
difficulty is that not many journalists
can operate from within Iran so it's
very difficult to verify what we're
seeing on social media Plus telegram and
Instagram just got recently booked this
week making it a lot harder to
communicate with Iranians of diverse
opinions but my colleague Mir has been
doing a bit of research and she's found
some examples of videos that aren't
quite what they seem now a video posted
on New Year's Eve on Twitter allegedly
shows the Iranian forces opening fire on
protesters but it's actually from the
2009 Iranian protest and with a quick
search online you'll find the same video
posted on YouTube seven years ago in
2011 now one of the trending hashtags of
the Iranian protest comes out of surgery
BIA and with that a lot of Iran related
content as well in fact this video is
from the same date December the 31st
Abdullah incident from Saudi Arabia
tweeted saying the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard ran over protesters but again this
same video from 2009 had already been
posted on YouTube a year later and take
a look at this video it says it was
filmed in December but these scenes are
actually from the Arusha protests again
in 2009 and here's a picture taken by
Reuters you could see the same blue Gate
motorbikes and burning rubble and the
person who posted it actually posted it
from California now another fake video
doing the rounds on social media is won
by a pro Israeli account and has had
more than a thousand retweets it says
the people of Iran are waking up but
this is actually from a protest from the
other side of the world Argentina and it
was taken last month and if there's
still doubt the people in the video are
actually speaking in Spanish and one
last example was this it was of an
Iranian protest it says three hundred
thousand people marched for democracy in
Iran but as someone else pointed out
Muhammad he says the demonstration is
actually not in Iran it's actually in
Bahrain and not in 2017 or 2018 but
you can even see the Bahraini Flags
being waived by the protesters in the
streets now let's take a closer look at
the accounts showing the fake content a
lot of them are either supporting the
u.s. Israel or Saudi Arabia where
leaders of all three countries are
public critics of Iran having threatened
sanctions on the Iranian government now
here's a tweet by the Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and he is
wishing the Iranian people with what he
called success in their noble quest for
freedom so he's supporting the
protesters there and also the US
president Donald Trump in a tweet said
the Iranian people are finally getting
wise and in a New York Times interview
the Saudi Crown Prince previously
criticized Iran's supreme leader calling
him the Hitler of the Middle East of
course this isn't to say the protests
haven't been violent in fact they have
on both sides police and protesters
and at least 20 people have died as
Kamal mentioned earlier but if you have
any doubt on the authenticity of what
you're seeing on social media then check
the source the dates the location of the
video or even the image that you're
looking at you can do a simple reverse
image search on Google if you're not
sure look that up as well online and if
you can't verify anything else then the
simple thing to do is just don't share
it but we want to hear from you today in
search of us during the show I'm on
Twitter and I'll respond to any of your
comments
