Antifake / Factcheck

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Fact-Check: Belarus-1 TV Retransmitted Video from US TV Networks Falsely Claiming Its Anti-Russian Framing

The video clip in question was actually created in 2018 and has no connection to Russia.

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Fake appearance date: 31.05.2024
Ivan Eismont, the head of the state-run Belarus-1 TV channel, claimed that the West is deceiving the entire world and waging a war against Russia. As evidence, he presented a video clip that allegedly was being aired by American TV networks. The Weekly Top Fake team investigated the true nature and origin of the video.

Ivan Eismont shared his perspective on how the West is misleading the global community on the air of Belarus–1 program “Editor's Club” on May 31, 2024.

“The West is fooling the whole world. The very part of it that doesn't understand what's going on. There is a famous video. They started waging war against Russia, and naturally, they’re concocting an ideological pretext: Russia is encroaching on... What's their favorite word? <...> Democracy. This is critically dangerous for our democracy. Just take a look at what American TV channels are broadcasting,” Eismont said.

The Belarus-1 audience was then shown a video montage of clips from various American TV channels, featuring hosts repeating the following phrase: “This is extremely dangerous for our democracy.”

“Adult men and women pretend that these are their own thoughts,” Eismont remarked. “In reality, they're parroting the lines fed to them by none other than [US Secretary of State] Anthony Blinken, or whoever is pulling the strings,” he added.

The video clip in question was actually created in 2018 and has no connection to Russia. One of the largest media companies in the U.S., which owns or manages nearly 200 television stations, launched an information campaign against fake news on its channels six years ago. The key message across all their channels was consistent: “The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media more alarming. Some media outlets publish the same fake stories without checking the facts first. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy”.

Viewers noticed that the same message was being addressed via different TV channels. Someone edited together snippets of these clips. Thus, that’s the very video that Ivan Eismont showed.

Then the authors of the anti-fake news campaign were accused of promoting the narrative of Donald Trump, who was talking about the “alarming trend of irresponsible, one-sided news.” In 2024, a confrontation with Russia was found by Eismont in that video.