The Albanian-language TikTok account named "mrgame.ks" yesterday (February 19) published a short video (28 seconds), which shows several birds falling dead from the sky.
In this video, this account claims that the event took place in the city of Gjirokastra, which they described as a tragic event.
After detailed research through the automated online program "InVID", hibrid.info has confirmed that this event is not related to the city of Gjirokastra, as claimed, but the same thing happened in the Mexican city of Chihuahua (here).
Link to the video material published on TikTok by the account "mrgame.ks":
The account "mrgame.ks" has published this video footage taken in the Mexican city of Chihuahua, falsely claiming that the event took place in Gjirokastër.
During the research, hibrid.info managed to confirm that in addition to the fact that the video has nothing to do with the Albanian city, it describes an old event, which occurred on February 7, 2022.
Hibrid.info has managed to find the authentic article published by the Mexican media "El Heraldo" (February 7, 2022). Within this chronicle, there is also the assessment of a zootechnical veterinarian, who had assessed that the birds could have died as a result of inhaling toxic fumes or while standing on the power cables, there was an overload that would have affected them. (see here)
The video material was later published (February 14) on the account of the British media outlet "The Telegraph", on the official YouTube channel. (see video below)
Analyze:
The account "mrgame.ks" has published a short video on TikTok in which several birds are seen falling dead from the sky, an event that occurred in 2022 in the Mexican city of Chihuahua.
However, the aforementioned website published this video on February 7, falsely claiming that this "tragic" event occurred in the Albanian city of Gjirokastër.
Based on its work methodology, hibrid.info assesses this video material as "Disinformation".
Reasoning:
A “Disinformation” rating is given to media reporting that contains a “mix” of inaccurate sources or even half-truthful content. This rating will also address reports that have incorrect attributions or headlines that do not reflect the text in terms of information accuracy.