Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
A 10-second news clip claiming that an earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter Scale jolted Kathmandu at 5:26 am on Tuesday. The video further claims that the epicentre of the quake was Belkot in neighbouring Nuwakot district. Newschecker found the video to be old and shared with a missing context.
A person died and over two dozen houses were damaged when an earthquake struck the western district of Jumla on Tuesday. The epicentre of the quake was in remote Bajura district, according to the US Geological Survey.
In this context, TikTok user @lalbabu_mansuri posted a video showing people running in a disorderly manner and vehicles wobbling and stopping as the ground is shaking. Audio accompanying the video, presented in a news-bulletin style says, “An earthquake of 5.3 magnitude jolted Kathmandu at 5:26 am on Tuesday. The video further claims that the epicentre of the earthquake was Belkot in Nuwakot district.” Text superimposed on the video reads, “Yet another earthquake in Kathmandu today. What is happening in Nepal?”
The video posted late on Tuesday (January 24), according to local time, has garnered 95.4k likes, 1,341 people have shared it and 651 users have commented on it in less than 24 hours of posting the video.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker conducted a search using relevant keywords to check about the latest earthquakes in Nepal which threw up several results. On checking a website named earthquaketrack.com we found that an earthquake of 5.6-magnitude jolted Nepal at 2.43pm local on January 24. We also found a news article published in Aljazeera.com about the same earthquake, whose epicentre was in remote Bajura district.
However, we didn’t find any reports of an earthquake near Kathmandu Valley on Tuesday morning (January 24, 2023).
Further, we checked the original audio feature of TikTok which led us to a news video published in News24 Television in August. We also searched for reports about the earthquake in Kathmandu with its epicenter in Nuwakot that occurred in the month of August. We came across several news articles regarding the earthquake in Kathmandu. On checking an article published in My Republica.com, we knew that an earthquake of 5.3-magnitude had jolted Belkot in Nuwakot district on August 6, 2022.
Then, taking a clue from the audio feature, we thoroughly searched the news bulletins published on the YouTube channel of News24 television. Finally, we found a news bulletin named ‘Morning News FataFat’ published on the YouTube channel of the television on 6 August, 2022, whose audio from 1.05minute time-stamp exactly matched the audio from the viral video.
As the visuals used in the viral video looks like the CCTV footage from the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal in April 2015, we conducted a search on YouTube using keyword “Nepal Earthquake CCTV footage” and found a video published on the channel named TheEventRecorder whose frames from 1.32- minute timestamp onwards exactly matched the viral video.
Our investigations clearly showed that the viral footage shows the moment when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Nepal in April 2015, while the accompanying audio is from August 2022 and shared with a false context.
Conclusion
The viral video claiming that an earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter Scale jolted Kathmandu with its epicentre in Nuwakot district is old, and shared with a missing context.
Result: Missing Context
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
