Does a video show Dr. Oz being attacked on TV for promoting a supposed three-day diabetes cure? No, that's not true: The footage that purports to be of Dr. Mehmet Oz being beaten up on a TV set stage was a live broadcast of a Ukrainian journalist brawling with a pro-Russian politician. The image of Oz with an apparent black eye that appears later in the video is doctored from a real episode of his show where the original footage shows he does not have a shiner.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on Instagram on February 26, 2024. It opened with footage of a group of men fighting on what appears to be a TV studio set and then Fox News host Laura Ingraham saying:
An attempt on Dr. Oz's life, live.
This is what the post looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Wed Feb 28 17:03:40 2024 UTC)
Using a screenshot from the video, a reverse image search (archived here) on Google Lens showed that the footage from the start of the video is from a February 20, 2022, live TV broadcast where Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butosov brawled with pro-Russian politician Nestor Shufrych and put him in a headlock.
The Independent reported (archived here) about the attack on February 20, 2022. The video published on their website at one minute 11 seconds matches the footage posted on Instagram, although it appears to be flipped. It does not show Dr. Oz.
The next clip is video of Fox News host Laura Ingraham. The sound doesn't match the movement of her mouth as she says:
An attempt on Dr. Oz's life, live.
The doctor sues pharmaceutical companies over a cheap diabetes remedy. He came to talk about a new innovative remedy that can cure diabetes in three days. Who is against this medical advancement and why?
Using a reverse image search (archived here) on Google Lens of a screenshot of Ingraham in the gold blouse from the video, it matched her broadcast on Fox News on November 14, 2023 (archived here). Ingraham does not mention Dr. Oz or a pharmaceutical company in the original video. A Google search (archived here) of her saying "An attempt on Dr. Oz's life" yields zero matching results.
The video then cuts to Dr. Oz with what appears to be a black eye saying:
The pharmaceutical mafia is against this medical breakthrough because it will lose a huge amount of money and a monopoly on the production of drugs that do not cure but only eliminate symptoms. I, on the other hand, guarantee you that my new product will help you get rid of diabetes in three days. One use a day to forget about dieting and health scares forever without any side effects. More than 100,000 Americans have already tried this drug and got rid of diabetes for good. You can get this remedy today, hurry up and place your order on the button below while it is available.
The footage of Dr. Oz with the black eye is a doctored version of the episode where he interviewed psychologist Jordan Peterson. This was posted on YouTube (archived here) on September 20, 2020. The opening of the YouTube video matches the video of Dr. Oz in the video posted on Instagram but he does not have a black eye as this screenshot shows:
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Wed Feb 28 17:23:16 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories previously debunked similar claims that reused faces of TV personalities paired with doctored sound to promote speculations about diabetes. One of those posts showed Laura Ingraham; another one falsely attributed diabetes-related statements to CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Dr. Oz.
Other Lead Stories debunks of fake celebrity endorsements are here.
