Misleading: Video shows panic at a US county fair, not COVID-19 scare in China
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By Zhenzhen Liu 刘真珍, Ma Licheng 马栎程, Katrina Guo 郭晶瑶 and Christine He 和绮桐
On Sept. 29 a Twitter user shared a video clip showing people running and screaming in panic at what appears to be a travelling carnival.
The user claimed the ruckus happened in China after someone shouted there was a COVID-19-positive person, causing people to run as they feared being sent off to a quarantine camp.
It also claimed that panic ensued after this person’s health status on the vaccine passport turned red after a scan, a signal in China’s three-colored code system implying he or she has been infected with the novel coronavirus.
Another also posted the same video with the same claim. Together, they have more than 1,821 likes and 385 retweets. The clip was viewed more than 120,000 times as of this writing.
However, this claim is false and the video was used in a misleading manner.
Annie Lab found a tweet with the same video that said the incident took place at the Fort Bend County Fair.
Using keyword search, we found another video clip posted on Sept. 25 on TikTok with a location hashtag #fortbendcountyfair.
This TikTok video is identical to the one posted on Twitter.
We learned that the Fort Bend County Fair is held in the city of Rosenberg in Texas in the United States.
The website of KHOU11, a local TV station in Houston, Texas, indeed featured the same carnival attractions seen in the Tiktok video.
According to a local news report by SNBC13, people ran for safety at the county fair on Sept. 23 after a shooting scare.
The official Facebook account of the local police said on the following day that “many people ran into the parking lots,” but there was “no evidence that a shooting occurred.”
Disclaimer: Although faculty members at the Journalism & Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong have done everything possible to verify the accuracy of the story, we cannot guarantee there are no mistakes. If you notice an error or have any questions, please email us.
Originally published at https://annielab.org on October 14, 2022.
