Just in case: Nope. A chair was not thrown out of the White House on live TV news
By Olivia Wang and Duan Hanzi
A series of screenshots posted on Weibo on Nov. 5 claimed to show a chair being thrown out of the White House during a live TV broadcast by Fox News.
The post in Chinese says “[it] seems someone is angry at a white-colored house somewhere in Washington D.C.” It gained over 28,000 likes, 1,689 comments with over 10,000 shares.
Although the account name and the rather sarcastic sentence indicate the images may not be from real news footage, some users’ comments seem to have taken the post seriously.
So, just in case; the claim is false 😆
The screenshot comes from a parody video produced by Jimmy Kimmel Live, an American late-night talk show program.
In the clip posted on the show’s official Twitter account, a voice imitating Trump can be heard shouting “Four more years!” and “I am the president forever” while furniture and other items including a chair were being thrown out of window.
The talkshow has made use of an actual news clip showing Fox News correspondent John Roberts broadcasting the results of the U.S. election and edited the footage to include items like a lamp and chairs thrown out of window.
A sound effect of people’s laughter, a common sitcom technique, is clearly audible in the video. The footage also features the watermark “#KIMMEL” indicating that the video has been digitally altered from the real news footage.
The screenshots in the potentially misleading Weibo post are all identical to the Jimmy Kimmel Live video.
The images on Weibo have been cropped to cut out the watermark, making it look like real news footage.
Annie Lab also checked the Fox News video and found no objects in the background.
There have been some media reports discussing the parody video jimmy Kimmel and his team are known to make satirical videos using actual news clips (like this and this).
Disclaimer: This is a student work. Although faculty members at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong have done everything possible to verify its accuracy, we cannot guarantee there are no mistakes. If you notice an error or have any questions, please email us at contact@annieasia.org.
