False Drone Claims Take Off
Plus: Russia Falsely Claims Ukraine Uses Santa to Deliver Draft Notices; Russians and Iranians Push AI Photo of Tucker Carlson with Ousted Syrian Leader
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Today:
Bogus claims soar amid drone sightings in New Jersey
Ho, ho, hold on: Pro-Kremlin sources falsely claim Ukrainian military officers dressed as Santa to hand out draft notices
Ads for Macy’s, Capital One, and T-Mobile fund the false claim that a cow-feed additive is dangerous
Pro-Russian and pro-Iranian accounts push AI image of Tucker Carlson and Bashar al-Assad together in Moscow
And More …
Today’s newsletter was edited by Eric Effron and Sofia Rubinson.
1. Flights of Fancy: Bogus Claims About Drone Sightings Swarm Social Media
By Sofia Rubinson and Sarah Komar
What happened: Amid a frenzy of reported sightings of what appear to be unidentified drones above New Jersey and nearby states, conspiracy accounts are citing out-of-context videos and hyperbolic false claims, stoking fear that the U.S. is under attack.
A closer look: While some of the sightings have not been explained by authorities, NewsGuard found several drone-related claims are demonstrably false.
Claim: Two videos (below) show drones firing illuminated projectiles above New Jersey.
Actually: The videos (above) depict a Dec. 12 training exercise at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, a military installation in Burlington County, New Jersey, the base’s deputy chief of public affairs, Rochelle Naus, told Lead Stories (NewsGuard Trust Score: 100/100). She added, “This is normal training conducted monthly and not outside our normal mission readiness training schedule.”
Claim: A video (below) shows a crashed drone on a New Jersey highway.
Actually: The video (above) portrays the wreckage from a fatal Dec. 12 plane crash near New York’s Westchester County Airport. The crash blocked traffic on I-684 at the New York-Connecticut border and caused a gas spill, according to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Claim: The drones are searching for a missing radioactive device.
Actually: This claim relies on a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) report stating that a piece of medical imaging equipment, which contained a small amount of radioactive material, was lost in transit on Dec. 2. However, the item was found on Dec. 10 at the FedEx facility where it was misplaced, a NJDEP spokesperson told PolitiFact (Trust Score: 100/100), and drones were reported as early as mid-November.
Claim: The Pentagon confirmed that the drones reported over the U.S. are from outer space.
Actually: The Pentagon did not confirm that the drones are extraterrestrial flying objects. This claim misrepresents a Pentagon spokesperson’s Dec. 11 statement that the drones did not belong to the U.S. military and had not been dispatched by a foreign entity.
Wild theories: In addition to provably false claims, social media users have become fixated on baseless conspiracy theories about the drones.
“Project Blue Beam,” a theory claiming that global elites are using advanced NASA technology to stage fake celestial events as a means to establish a totalitarian world government, has gained significant traction in online echo chambers. There were 90,500 mentions of the term on social media in the last week, according to a monitoring tool used by NewsGuard.
Another baseless claim, originating in a TikTok video posted by a drone manufacturer CEO in Kansas, posits that a Soviet nuclear warhead that went missing in Ukraine at the end of the Cold War is heading toward the U.S., and drones were deployed to search for the radioactive material. As the National Review’s (Trust Score: 92.5/100) Jim Geraghty explained, “There has never been any serious evidence of any lost or loose nuclear weapons during the transfer of Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal to Russia.”
Context: A Dec. 16 joint statement from the FBI, Pentagon, and Department of Homeland Security said that the sightings have included a mix of commercial drones, hobbyist drones, law enforcement drones, and misidentified natural phenomena, such as stars.
The joint statement added that the activity poses no threat to “the civilian airspace in New Jersey or other states in the northeast.”
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2. Conscription Con: Kremlin Sources Claim Ukrainian Officers Dressed as Santa to Hand Out Draft Notices
’Tis the season for yet another whimsical claim crafted by Russian sources.
What happened: Pro-Kremlin accounts and Russian state media are falsely claiming that Ukrainian military registration officers dressed up as Santa Claus to hand out draft notices and catch draft dodgers in Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa.
A closer look: Russian sources advancing this claim cited a 12-second video showing soldiers exiting a military vehicle and donning Santa costumes over their uniforms. The sources described the military personnel as members of Ukraine’s military administration handing out military summonses. You can watch the video here:
A Dec. 15 article from Moscow-based newspaper Svobodnaya Press titled “In Odesa, ‘Fathers Frosts’ are handing out summonses instead of gifts,” stated, “In Odesa, employees of territorial recruitment centers have come up with a way to outwit men who are trying to hide from mobilization.”
Telegram channel “Uncle Slava,” created by the late Russian propagandist Stanislav Andreev, posted the video and stated in Russian: “In Odesa, the military is dressing up as Santa Claus. Now they are mobilizing reindeer.”
Actually: The video shows volunteers from the Ukrainian military who were handing out candy and gifts, not draft notices.
A NewsGuard reverse-image search of keyframes found that the video appears to have first been published on YouTube on Dec. 15. The full one-minute video shows the men buying candy at the grocery store and handing it out to children.
Ukrainian news outlet Bloknot-odessa reported that the “Santas” were soldiers who had volunteered to give candy and other gifts to children in the war-torn nation.
In a Dec. 16 X post, Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, part of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, stated, “In reality, the video features volunteers who decided to bring holiday cheer to children in Odesa and purchase gifts for kids from the Kherson region.”
Context: This is not the first holiday season that Russian sources concocted a Santa-related false claim.
Last December, pro-Kremlin accounts falsely claimed that the Ukrainian government would fine anyone who dressed up as Father Frost, the Soviet-era counterpart to Father Christmas, during the 2023 holiday season. (Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprint for this claim here.)
Click here to find out more about NewsGuard Trust Scores and our process for rating websites. You can download NewsGuard’s browser extension, which displays NewsGuard Trust Score icons next to links on search engines, social media feeds, and other platforms by clicking here.
3. Brand Victims of the Week: Ads for Macy’s, Capital One, and T-Mobile Fund False Claim that Cow-Feed Additive Bovaer is Unsafe
In this Reality Check feature, NewsGuard identifies global brands that support the spread of misinformation by unintentionally funneling programmatic advertising dollars to sites that repeatedly peddle false claims. Unless advertisers use inclusion or exclusion lists to place their programmatic ads, these ads will appear on websites regardless of their trustworthiness.
This week: A NewsGuard analyst based in the U.S. was shown programmatic ads for Macy’s, Capital One, and T-Mobile, among others, on an article published by Principia-Scientific.com (Trust Score: 20/100). Principia-Scientific.com is a London-based news website that has repeatedly advanced false claims about vaccines and climate change. The Dec. 18, 2024, article claimed that meat from cattle that are fed Bovaer, a feed additive that reduces cows’ climate impact by limiting their methane emissions, is dangerous for people to consume. In fact, the European Food Safety Authority and the U.K. Food Standards Agency approved Bovaer in 2021 and 2023, respectively, as safe for cows, consumers, and the environment. (See NewsGuard’s related Misinformation Fingerprint here.)
Representatives for Macy’s, Capital One, and T-Mobile did not immediately respond to NewsGuard’s emailed requests for comment.
(Disclosure: NewsGuard is among the companies that license data that would help advertisers only advertise on reliable, brand suitable news sites.)
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If you see or hear something that you think may be provably false, please alert NewsGuard via realitycheck@newsguardtech.com and we'll do our best to get to the bottom of it. Note: Tips should not include content that you simply disagree with, however strongly.
4. Iranians and Russians Cite AI Photo to Claim that Tucker Carlson Met with Deposed Syria Leader in Russia
What happened: An AI-generated image purporting to show U.S. conservative commentator Tucker Carlson interviewing ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in Russia has gone viral, shared by pro-Russian and pro-Iranian social media accounts apparently seeking to promote Assad’s legitimacy and portray Russia as a haven for embattled leaders.
A closer look: The image emerged in early December 2024 after insurgents took over Damascus, forcing Assad to flee to Russia, and after Carlson’s most recent high-profile visit to Moscow.
An article on Czechia.News-Pravda.com (Trust Score: 7.5/100), part of an anonymously run network of pro-Kremlin sites, was titled, “Great photo: Carlson & Assad in Moscow.”
Dec. 12 Arabic-language X post from anonymous account @75suhair said, “Assad conducted a press interview with Tucker Carlson.”
Actually: The image is AI-generated, and there is no evidence that Assad and Carlson met, in Russia or elsewhere.
A watermark on the photo indicates that it was created using Grok, X owner Elon Musk’s image generator, which, as previously reported in Reality Check, can be used to produce misleading or false images related to major news topics when prompted by someone with malicious intent.
Who created it? The fake photo appears to have originated on Panorama, a Russian-language satirical site whose articles have previously given rise to false claims.
NewsGuard has identified multiple pro-Russian false claims that originated as satire, including the claim that Ukrainian athletes competing at the Paris 2024 Olympics were required to wear GPS monitors, and that American investment management company BlackRock bought 47 percent of Ukrainian land. (Reality Check members can read NewsGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints for these claims here.)
Reality Check is produced by Co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.
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