Does a real WABI-TV 5 news report show Maine's Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, Troy Jackson, threatening to cut staff in half with an axe? No, that's not true: Station General Manager Kim Petry confirmed that the video is fabricated and "was not produced, aired, or authorized by WABI." Hive Moderation determined the audio was 99.1% likely to be AI-generated. Lead Stories found no matching reports from established news outlets about such an incident.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) by the @ALERTX360 account on X on Oct. 28, 2026. It read:
Multiple staffers allege Maine Senate candidate Troy Jackson threatened to "cut any insubordinate staffer in half" with his logging axe. Democrats have nominated him to challenge Susan Collins.
This is what a screenshot of the video in the post looked like at the time of publication:
(Image source: post by @ALERTX360 on X.)
The story is embedded below:
Multiple staffers allege Maine Senate candidate Troy Jackson threatened to "cut any insubordinate staffer in half" with his logging axe. Democrats have nominated him to challenge Susan Collins. https://t.co/Sppyh6KpxU
-- ALERT X (@ALERTX360) October 28, 2026
WABI-TV 5
WABI responded to the claim in an Oct. 29, 2026, email to Lead Stories. The email included a statement from Kim Petry, WABI's vice president, general manager and director of sales, which read:
WABI can confirm that the video is fabricated and appears to use a synthetic voice. It was not produced, aired, or authorized by WABI. We have contacted X to request its removal.
We encourage viewers to verify WABI reporting directly at wabi.tv and on our official social media accounts. We remain committed to combating misinformation and providing Maine communities with accurate, trustworthy local journalism.
Video analysis
Lead Stories ran the video through the Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection tool (archived here), which concluded that it was 99.1% "Likely to have AI-Generated Speech" and 12.3% "Likely to be AI-Generated Video":
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
News searches
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and found no matching reports about the claim from established news outlets using the search terms: "Troy Jackson," "axe," and "WABI."
Lead Stories also searched the WABI website (archived here) for the story and found no results matching the claim.
Lead Stories also debunked another fabricated news report in October 2026:
- Fact Check: FAKE Cleveland 19 Report 'Four Former Staffers Have Accused Sherrod Brown Of Sexual Assault' -- AI-Generated Audio
