Singapore—According to news conglomerate Reuters’ Fact Check team, a video that reportedly showed members of the Workers’ Party going about shaking hands during the pandemic is fake, as it was in actuality filmed several years ago.
Reuters issued a release late on Monday evening, June 29, one day before Nomination Day, when candidacies for this year’s General Election were finalized.
The video clip was uploaded to social media platform Facebook on June 23, and fortunately, did not seem to have received much traction online. Reuters Fact Check was able to determine that the video had been shot in 2012.
According to Reuters’ release, the video showed members of the Worker’s Party shaking hands with supporters on the street. “The footage was uploaded on June 23 and shows party members driving through a neighbourhood on the back of a bus, before stopping to greet supporters on the side of the street.”
The caption to the video said that the footage had been taken “early this morning” at Aljunied GRC, adding that this was evidence of people “putting COVID-19 away as if life returned to normal”.
Reuters said that the video which was posted had been filmed in May 2012, eight years before the coronavirus pandemic, and had actually been taken at victory parade in Hougang.
Reuters was able to match the false video on Facebook to two videos on YouTube from May 2012, “taking particular notice of the man on the bus wearing a yellow garland round his neck and the same election material pasted on the side of the vehicle (here , here).”
Additionally, information from Google Street View has helped with establishing the timeline of the video.
“Images from April 2011 from Hougang Avenue 5 shows the exact location of the parade (tinyurl.com/y77lpjf2).
However, the same location in 2019 shows the road has been updated with a grassy island in the centre (tinyurl.com/ybarv2xf). The video on Facebook matches the location in the 2011 Street View,” the Reuters release read.
Reuters Fact Check ends with the following verdict: “False. The video does not show Worker’s Party members shaking hands with crowds of supporters amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It was shot in 2012.” -/TISG
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