It would be good if each newsroom worked a little harder, fact-checking before sharing information.
The consequences for newsrooms can be very bad if the information they share is wrong to the point of altering facts.
Like the date information in this image caption, which is completely inaccurate.
This is a historic photo, taken in 1902 in London, not in 1906 as stated in the image caption. The newsroom that uploaded this content seems to have done no fact-checking at all.
Newsrooms prefer to chase engagement, easily crediting Twitter, now known as X, without trying to find the original source.
When the fake news debunking process was applied to this image, I found it widely circulating in the web and social media ecosystem.
For initial verification, I used a digital forensic tool called InVid. I used a reverse image search technique which led me to various sources.
In short, I was directed to the page https://www.npg.org.uk/. The National Portrait Gallery, London, confirms that the image was taken in July 1902.
The image was captured by Sir (John) Benjamin Stone (1838-1914), a politician and photographer. The location of the image is in the United Kingdom: England, London (Members’ Entrance to Terrace, Houses of Parliament, Westminster, London).
The image is also sold on several websites such as https://www.alamy.com/ which sells it for $19 each.
On the page https://npgshop.org.uk/ this photo is sold for between £6.00 - £75.00 depending on resolution and size. Both websites attribute the image source to Sir Benjamin Stone and confirm it was taken in 1902.
So, how did the Twitter user get that content, prompting the newsroom to share it on February 14, 2024?
I assume the source was Wikipedia. Perhaps the Twitter user got that information from Wikipedia. It indeed states 1906.
However, Wikipedia is not a trusted website as a valid reference source.
In fact, Wikipedia itself advises users to be cautious when taking information from the site because its accuracy cannot be verified.
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