On November 9, a video surfaced online with a claim that one of the two men in the video is Mr. Oscar Bloh, the head of the Election Coordinating Committee – a coalition of civil society organizations established in 2010 with the mandate to observe elections in Liberia.
Report By: Alpha Daffae Senkpeni | LVL Fact checker
In the video, which is of a very poor quality, a man can be seen having conversation with Mr. Amara Konneh in a room.
The video was shared to Facebook on November 9, 2023 at 12:59 am by a Facebook by an account named Mannuel Fle Chea.
The Claim
Also, Chichipoly Room, a popular Facebook group, shared the video claiming that it was released by CDC Secretary General and Mayor of Monrovia, Jefferson T. Koijee. The post had the same claims about Mr. Bloh working with officials of the Unity Party in their war room.
We search and found a live press conference held on November 9, 2023 at the headquarters of the CDC where this same video was projected on a wall with the CDC Secretary General claiming that Mr. Bloh holds a membership card of the Unity Party.
On Thursday, November 9, the ECC released a statement refuting allegation that its head is not a member of the Unity Party, denying that the man in the video is not Mr. Bloh.
Rating Justification
We fact checked the 47-seconds video and found that the man in the video is not Mr. Bloh. To arrive at this conclusion, we first conducted multiple reverse image search of the video but found nothing to trace the video to an old incident. This means the video was never posted or published online before it surfaced recently.
Further search conducted to detect the use of artificial intelligence or AI showed no result of the video being a product of deepfake.
We then analyzed the video. In the video, there is a computer on a table projecting the map of Liberia on a big wall screen with counties colored in green and blue. We listened to the conversation in the video and realized that the discussion is unrelated to the recently held elections in Liberia.
Behind the table on which the computer sits, a man, who is tagged in the video as “Oscar Bloh” is having a conversation with Mr. Konneh and another person who is not seen. It begins with Gbarpolu County senator-elect Amara Konneh walking to a seat and asking the man behind the computer about the time the work will be completed.
Excerpt from conversation between Mr. Konneh and the man behind the computer was:
Amara Konneh: “When you think you can review this again and finish it?
Man behind the computer: “I can work on it tonight and before tomorrow”.
Amara Konneh: “Tomorrow what time can we meet? Are you teaching tomorrow?”
Man behind the Computer: No. No.
Amara Konneh: Can we meet 10:00 tomorrow?
Man behind the computer: OK.
The fact check of the video considered the conversation in the video, the image of the man and the identity of the man alleged to be Mr. Bloh.
In addition to realizing that the conversation is unrelated to the elections, we verified if the man in the video is Mr. Bloh. To do this we reviewed the conversation in the video. In the video, the man was asked if he is “teaching tomorrow?” And he replied “No, No”.
We then checked if Mr. Bloh works as a teacher and determined that Mr. Bloh is not a teacher at any institution in the country. Therefore, he could not have been asked ordinarily in a normal conversation if he was “teaching tomorrow” as was asked in the video.
We also analyzed the voice of the man in the video with the voice of Mr. Bloh. To do this, we obtained a past audio of Mr. Bloh speaking at a recent press conference and compared it with the voice of the man in the video. The result of our analysis shows that the two voices are not the same. The man in the video voice is distinct from that of Mr. Bloh’s.
An analysis of the voice in the video and the voice of Mr. Bloh are not the same.
We also analyzed the image of the man in the video, comparing it with Mr. Bloh’s by using image analysis and comparison tool. We screenshot an image of the man in the video and compared it with a previous photo of Mr. Bloh taken from the same angle. The result shows that the persons in the two images are not the same.
Analysis of the two image show that they are not the same person.
We also manually reviewed the physical structure of the man in the video and compared his features with Mr. Bloh’s. Our analysis result is that the skin pigmentation, facial, and body structures are not the same.
Conclusion
Based on these facts derived from the analysis of the video, we therefore conclude that the man in the video is not Oscar Bloh. We also conclude that the conversation in the video is unrelated to the October 10, 2023, elections. The claim that the man in the video is Mr. Bloh of the ECC is misleading.
This report was developed with the support of Internews through the USAID Media Activity project. The funder has no say in the editorial decision leading to the production of this content
[…] “The ECC has publicly clarified that it is not Oscar Bloh in the video. Local Voices, a U.S. Embassy-supported fact-checking organization, has also confirmed that it is not Oscar Bloh in the video,” the embassy said in a release over the…. […]