World War Z Footage Was Not Used by MSNBC in Protest Report

The whole world has their eyes glued to social media to witness viral moments from protests [...]

By Patrick Cavanaugh

world war z movie protext footage
(Photo: Paramount Pictures)

The whole world has their eyes glued to social media to witness viral moments from protests against police brutality and systemic racism in law enforcement that are taking place in cities around the globe, which has also inadvertently resulted in the spread of misinformation, including a video which claimed MSNBC used footage from the film World War Z to falsely share that it was from a Philadelphia protest. The video was created by Twitter user @OfficialSlop, who has since deleted the original post and has openly acknowledged that the edit was a "dumb dumb joke" and was created "out of stupid boredom." Despite the video itself including the text "NOT REAL" over certain segments, conspiracy theorist organization QAnon shared the video as evidence of mainstream media manipulating its audiences, with even that extremist organization admitting the video was incorrect.

"Well that escalated quickly. YES, that MSNBC clip was from World War Z, I even marked the video above the MSNBC logo 'NOT REAL,'" the editor shared on Twitter. "I dramatically underestimated Twitter, many pointed it out, some claimed it was 'real'-that was stupid of me. I apologize."

The next day, they tweeted, "MSNBC NEVER USED THE WORLD WAR Z CLIP!! PERIOD! AUDIO TAKEN FROM THIS REAL VIDEO LAST NIGHT (BELOW), WITH GRAPHICS ON TOP OF A TRAILER RIPPED FROM YOU TUBE. AGAIN, MSNBC NEVER NEVER AIRED THE WWZ FOOTAGE!!"

This certainly isn't the first time a prank went too far on social media, with at least this instance seeing the creator of the forgery admitting their mistake and attempting to debunk people passing it off as real. With millions of Twitter users wanting to spread the word about a number of injustices, people are more apt to spread photos and videos which appear to be real more quickly than they seek the source of the information.

What do you think of the situation? Let us know in the comments below!

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