Press Association wrote:Lib Dem leader's 'fake news' warning after false 'squirrel abuse' story goes viralLiberal Democrats leader Jo Swinson has warned the public to be wary of sharing misinformation after a story went viral that wrongly claimed she had abused squirrels.
Doctored images claiming to show an article on the Mirror’s website were shared thousands of times across Twitter and Facebook last week, including by a number of pro-Brexit and Brexit Party groups.
But Mirror executive editor Michael Greenwood tweeted today: “The Mirror website has never published a story about Jo Swinson and squirrels (until this one).”
The false story, written by non-existent journalist “Wurrance Telephene”, claimed the Lib Dem leader was blasted by animal rights charities after “harrowing footage” was found on a private Facebook account.
Speaking to LBC’s Iain Dale today, she said: “This sort of fake news is surprising to me, now that I am the leader of a party. This isn’t the only one, there has been various other fake news story. Sometimes using the byline of an established journalist.
“There was one that used Peter Walker’s name from the Guardian and he had to go online to debunk it and say he never wrote it.
“But they’re quite sophisticated in that people believe them.
“I do think it’s worrying because it has echoes of what we’ve seen in other elections. Particularly when you think about fake news and the technological possibility for deep fakes, where videos can be faked.
“I think it’s very difficult to prevent the spread.”
Researchers at First Draft, a non-profit group fighting misinformation, found that the false story was originally circulated among anonymous pro-Labour accounts, confined to a fairly small section of Twitter.