How to bust an internet hoax: the case of the bull’s head
This entry was posted in Divers on August 10th, 2011 by Cécile Gommelet - 4 comments »
Yesterday afternoon, Twitter was afire with talk of the riots spreading across the UK. One report in particular caught our eye: apparently rioters had decapitated the famous bull statue at Birmingham’s Bullring, one of the biggest shopping areas in Europe.
Was it for real? Had a mob of rioters really managed to hack the head off a solid bronze statue and get away with it? Why would someone do that? As our whole team was monitoring the net, we quickly saw cries of hoax.
Indeed, the hoax is clear when you look at the shop behind the bull - but you need some local knowledge. On the picture of the “decapitated” bull, you can see a USC store in the background. That store was at that exact place at the Bullring... until it closed down last summer. It has now been replaced by a Hollister store, which opened on December 16, 2010.
Busted. The original picture was taken by Tim in June 2006 and posted on his blog.
Neil finally gave us definitive confirmation that the bull is still proudly standing at the Bullring this morning.
The rumour is now shut down. Oddly enough, according to Bullring’s Twitter account, it never existed.
We get images like this all the time, and the team here checks them out meticulously to make sure they're legit. Tools like Google Reverse Image Search are useful, but they're not the most important advantage we have when it comes to crowdsourced journalism. The most important, of course, is our wide network of contributors and contacts - each of whom has deep local knowledge and expertise. Together, we can report the news and find the truth like never before.
Was it for real? Had a mob of rioters really managed to hack the head off a solid bronze statue and get away with it? Why would someone do that? As our whole team was monitoring the net, we quickly saw cries of hoax.
Indeed, the hoax is clear when you look at the shop behind the bull - but you need some local knowledge. On the picture of the “decapitated” bull, you can see a USC store in the background. That store was at that exact place at the Bullring... until it closed down last summer. It has now been replaced by a Hollister store, which opened on December 16, 2010.
Busted. The original picture was taken by Tim in June 2006 and posted on his blog.
Neil finally gave us definitive confirmation that the bull is still proudly standing at the Bullring this morning.
The rumour is now shut down. Oddly enough, according to Bullring’s Twitter account, it never existed.
We get images like this all the time, and the team here checks them out meticulously to make sure they're legit. Tools like Google Reverse Image Search are useful, but they're not the most important advantage we have when it comes to crowdsourced journalism. The most important, of course, is our wide network of contributors and contacts - each of whom has deep local knowledge and expertise. Together, we can report the news and find the truth like never before.
On August 10th, 2011 at 15 h 48 min