What is real? How CBC News verifies video and images

We use this editor’s blog to explain our journalism and what’s happening at CBC News. You can find more blogs here.

More than 600 newsrooms, including ours at CBC, will be in attendance today World News Dayan annual global initiative to draw public attention to the role that journalists and trusted news play in the service of citizens and democracy.

This year’s World News Day theme, ‘Choose the Truth’, resonates at a time of growth disinformation, AI-generated deepfakes and when major technology platforms use algorithms to significantly shape, restrict or exclude news from our feeds.

There is ample evidence that our information ecosystem has been disrupted, due to an explosion of conspiracy theories, such as the recent false claims of pet-eating refugees to the fact that Canadians cannot share credible news on Facebook due to Meta’s rejection of the Online News Act. (Note: More than a year has passed and still a surprising “supermajority” of Canadians don’t realize that credible news has been banned from their Facebook and Instagram feeds, according to an online survey of 1,463 Canadians performed in July.)

And of course, we all live in a world where it’s easier than ever for people to use video and images to make something that’s untrue seem real – including CBC News journalists who find them similarity used in advertising scams.

Increasingly we see examples of audio, video and photos being misused or manipulated, often with the help of artificial intelligence, influencing and shaping what people believe to be true.

The need for consistency and quality around fact-checking and verification work is also growing, even as CBC works with international partners to make media origins more transparent through initiatives like Content References.

Journalism has always been about confirming the legitimacy of photos and videos, but it is increasingly important for our teams at CBC News to verify the who, what, where and when of content that we did not capture ourselves.

Take, for example, the devastating forest fire that burned much of Jasper, Alta., this summer.

As the flames got closer to the city, residents were evacuated and the media kept at bay, leaving only essential emergency services on the ground. Some of the people who continued to work in the community posted photos and videos of the destruction.

Journalistically, these images were crucial to the public’s understanding of the situation. They were the only indication for many of us of the extent of the damage, while everyone else, including reporters, was forced to wait far away until the danger had passed.

The reports also posed significant challenges to credible news organizations. Many of the people who took the photos and videos that circulated so quickly did not want others to know their identities, given the work they did. There were a lot of screenshots (and screenshots of screenshots). So it was not easy and in many cases impossible to trace this important content back to its original source.

The footage also showed neighborhoods in many parts of the city so badly destroyed that they were almost unrecognizable, even to CBC employees who knew the city well.

However, none of that detracted from the extreme importance of giving all our public – but especially the residents of Jasper who were forced to flee – a look at what was damaged and what was not.

So our teams went to work, using tools like Google Street View and archival footage to find clues that confirmed that the images we saw were indeed of Jasper and, if so, to pinpoint the exact location where they were taken.

In many cases, that meant looking for recognizable landmarks in the rubble — such as a distinctive decorative rock on a lawn or a recognizable metal fence — or comparing a photo from before the flames with what was left afterward, such as a concrete porch or brick . chimney.

We also used digital tools to assess whether there were indications that the images had been artificially manipulated.

It took time and effort. But it was essential work; it was our duty to verify the legitimacy of anything we published or broadcast to ensure we were giving our audience a picture of the aftermath that we knew was true and accurate.

The work of video and photo verification requires training and practice. Recognizing how critical this is and will continue to be to all of our journalism, CBC News has developed and is now introducing a new training program for our journalists. We’re building the skills of people in newsrooms across Canada who can quickly help verify visual content.

We are also building a dedicated news team focused on developing original and investigative stories using open source information (e.g. satellite imagery, social media) and verification methods and tools.

All of this is part of how CBC News lives up to the commitment to accuracy that is at our core Journalistic standards and practicesso that our audience, in the words of today’s World News Day theme: ‘Choose the truth’.

Speaking of reliable news, I’m happy to report that CBC News has done this again certified under the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI), an international standard for external audits, intended to highlight and promote reliable journalism. Read more about the JTI at Reporters Without Borders.