Fake News: Televison NOT Reporting 23 Dead, 300 Severely Wounded at 'Gilets Jaunes' Demonstration in Paris

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Televison NOT Reporting 23 Dead, 300 Severely Wounded at 'Gilets Jaunes' Demonstration in Paris

Were 23 people reported dead and 300 severely wounded according to local television in Paris, France, during today's "Gilets Jaunes" demonstration? No, that's not true: a Belgian satire website is up to its old tricks again, using faked screenshots to make hyperinflated claims about dead and wounded during riots or manifestations. It is not true.

The story originated from an article published on November 24, 2018 by NordPresse titled "Gilets jaunes à Paris: 23 morts légers, 300 blessés graves selon la télévision" (archived here) which only contained this faked screenshot:

faketv.jpg

"Morts légers" means "lightly dead" in French, it is a standard catchphrase often used by NordPresse.

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:

Gilets jaunes à Paris: 23 morts légers, 300 blessés graves selon la télévision

Commentaires

Real riots are currently going on in Paris on the Champs Elysees, as you can see in this live stream:

But Le Journal Du Nord (nordpresse.be) is a satirical website that was set up to mock the (real) sudpresse.be (since renamed sudinfo.be), a Belgian media group. They were involved in a lawsuit with each other in 2017 which was eventually won by NordPresse.

They have sort of a disclaimer in their header that reads:

Toute l'information vérifiée par nos analystes simiens

Translated: "all information verified by our monkey analysts".

We wrote about nordpresse.be before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site, as you can see they have often reported fake news abou the number of dead and injured during various events:

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion