But the video of the dolphin was actually filmed near the Molo Ichnusa terminal in the Port of Cagliari, Sardinia.

It was an easy story to factcheck. Italian outlets covered the real dolphin sighting story days before international media picked it up, and accurately reported the video as recorded in Cagliari, Sardinia. We reviewed Italian news reports and scanned Cagliari on Google Maps to pinpoint the exact location where the video of the dolphin was filmed.

When a video goes viral on social media, news organisations often pick up the story. Eager to publish the seemingly good news coronavirus angle, several news organisations abandoned simple due diligence, which was already done by local Italian media.

Intense military activity in the skies over northwest Idlib led to the downing of a Turkish Anka drone and two Syrian Su-24 fighter jets on March 1, 2019. The drone was shot down several hours before the jets. Several Syrian journalists published video of the downed Anka drone with the correct information on March 1, one day before Sky News published their inaccurate tweet on March 2.

Clashes between the Syrian army and Turkish-backed militants in the Idlib countryside had intensified during this period, as the latter sought to regain control over the strategic town of Saraqib.

We had a cameraman on-the-ground covering events — he filmed the exact moment one of the Syrian jets was shot down. Our footage clearly showed that the aircraft was a fighter jet. In comparison, the Sky News video showed a different seized aircraft. As a further layer of verification and comparative analysis, we also used military equipment databases to compare the visuals seen in both videos.

To ensure our clients and our audience received the facts and transparent information, we published a Twitter thread on our verification work.

Three people were killed in a terror attack in the Notre Dame Church in Nice on October 29, 2020. That same morning, in the immediate minutes after the attack in Nice, a man was shot dead by French police in an unrelated incident after threatening people with a handgun in Avignon. Breaking news of the incidents in Nice and Avignon was quickly followed by video circulating on Twitter, purportedly showing the arrest of a man.

We searched Google Maps for the name of the cafe seen in the video: «Cafe Hermes.» We did not find a Cafe Hermes in Avignon or Nice, but we did find a cafe by that name in Grenoble.

This particular fake video was shared with the intention of spreading false information. It was shared widely across social media and group messaging platforms in the immediate aftermath of the attacks with the intention of causing harm.

This is a pertinent example of the pattern that follows on social media after almost every major news story that occurs in a public space. This shows how quickly false information spreads across social media and permeates into discourse.

The challenge for news organizations is to guard against the spread of such false information by ensuring their newsrooms are trained and equipped with fundamental digital literacy skills.

Note:
Misinformation is information that is false but not created with the intention to create harm, disinformation is a subset of misinformation, created to cause harm to a person, social group, organization, or country.