A photo shared hundreds of times on Facebook claims to show the American cable news channel CNN describing cases of COVID-19 in Nigeria as “false”, accusing the government of making them up to embezzle public funds.
The image features a breaking-news banner that reads: “False COVID-19 cases in Nigeria”. A smaller strap underneath it adds: “Nigerian government accused of taking advantage of the pandemic”., The same image has been shared in another Facebook post here, as well as on WhatsApp., AFP ran multiple reverse image searches and found that the image showing CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was taken from this video of an interview in March., The banner in the original video read: “FEMA declares New York ‘major disaster’ as coronavirus surges”. Throughout the interview, there was not a single mention of COVID-19 cases in Nigeria. You can read the transcript here., Blitzer has had two other interviews with De Blasio since the pandemic hit the United States, the first on April 4 and the second on April 18, 2020, in which they wore different clothing. They did not speak about Nigeria in these interviews, either., The misleading image was doctored by using a screenshot from the original CNN interview and replacing the original headlines, in this case with false claims about Nigeria., Fabricated TV banners are frequently created either by using an editing tool like Photoshop or a meme generator like the website Break Your Own News, which\xa0has been used to make other false claims since the coronavirus outbreak went global., One example was the story that Russian President Vladimir Putin had set lions loose to enforce a lockdown in the country, which AFP debunked here., Below is a template from the website showing how easy it is to manipulate an image by simply adding new text in the respective headline fields., As of May 5, 2020, Nigeria had recorded 2,950 positive cases of COVID-19, with\xa098 deaths, according to the country’s centre for disease control., , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
This fabricated headline was added to a screenshot of a CNN interview | AFP Fact Check