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Chris Hamilton, social media editor at 主播大秀 News has posted on the about the online Syrian 鈥榟ero boy鈥� video phenomenon. The video, which claimed to show a young boy rescuing a girl in a shoot-out in Syria, quickly spread across the internet. Meanwhile the 主播大秀鈥檚 User Generated Content Hub (the world鈥檚 first newsgathering operation of its kind) and 主播大秀 Monitoring struggled to verify that the video was genuine. Here鈥檚 an extract from Chris鈥� blog:

鈥淓ven as we translated the Arabic heard on the video and looked for other clues, the producers working to verify it noted that on one of the most widely shared YouTube versions there were comments questioning whether it was real. Similar comments were seen in a . Although that鈥檚 not uncommon with Syrian video, as both sides engage in a fierce propaganda war, the volume seemed high - but that wasn鈥檛 conclusive in itself.

Ultimately, no-one internally could say for sure whether the video was real or not - which isn鈥檛 unusual with content like this. 主播大秀 News frequently runs video where we haven鈥檛 filmed it, or obtained it directly ourselves, and can鈥檛 vouch for the source. We signal this to audiences by saying we haven鈥檛 been able to 鈥榠ndependently verify鈥� it.

But in this case there were enough doubts - especially over possible dubbing of the voices, and the moment the boy is 鈥榮hot鈥� - for the UGC Hub to advise that the video shouldn鈥檛 run on 主播大秀 News outlets.

As the Syria 鈥榟ero boy鈥� video racked up more than five million YouTube views over the following days, the raging debate about it , which reports on stories trending around the world.

Then, hours after their story went up, there was a stunning development, as Anne-Marie Tomchak of 主播大秀 Trending explains: 鈥淲e discovered that the video was made by a group of Norwegian film-makers in Malta earlier this year.鈥濃��

Read the rest of this post on the .

Hannah Khalil is Digital Content Producer, About the 主播大秀 Website and blog

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