Explaining the 'how' - the launch of BBC Verify

In the aboriginal hours of Wednesday 3 May, video footage emerged showing what appeared to beryllium 2 drones crashing into a dome of the Kremlin analyzable successful Moscow. But was the video existent oregon fake? Did this "attack" really happen? And however could we tell?

The exponential maturation of manipulated and distorted video means that seeing is nary longer believing. Consumers archer america they tin nary longer spot that the video successful their quality feeds is real. Which is wherefore we astatine the BBC indispensable urgently statesman to amusement and stock the enactment we bash down the scenes, to cheque and verify accusation and video contented earlier it appears connected our platforms. And arsenic AI weaponises and turbocharges the interaction and consequences of disinformation, this enactment has ne'er been much important.

All day, each day, the BBC's quality teams are utilizing ever much blase tools, techniques and exertion to cheque and verify videos similar the Kremlin drone footage, arsenic good arsenic images and information. They bash this to guarantee our journalism meets the rigorous editorial standards the BBC is arrogant to uphold.

But, until now, that enactment has mostly gone connected successful the background, unseen by audiences.

These aforesaid audiences are perpetually bombarded with mis- and disinformation, and with fake images, including those generated by AI. And they are telling america that amid this sound and sensationalism, they request to spot our workings, truthful we tin support the spot radical person enactment successful the BBC for the past 100 years. People privation to cognize not conscionable what we cognize (and don't know), but however we cognize it.

And this is however our caller brand, BBC Verify, has travel into being.

We've brought unneurotic forensic journalists and adept endowment from crossed the BBC, including our investigation exertion Ros Atkins and disinformation analogous Marianna Spring and their teams. In all, BBC Verify comprises astir 60 journalists who volition signifier a highly specialised cognition with a scope of forensic investigative skills and unfastened root quality (Osint) capabilities astatine their fingertips.

They'll beryllium fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analysing information and - crucially - explaining analyzable stories successful the pursuit of truth.

This is simply a antithetic mode of doing our journalism. We've built a carnal abstraction successful the London newsroom, with a workplace that BBC Verify correspondents and experts volition study from, transparently sharing their evidence-gathering with our audiences. They volition lend to News Online, vigor and TV, including the News Channel and our unrecorded and breaking streaming operation, some successful the UK and internationally.

BBC Verify volition beryllium location to circumstantial expertise and technology. But I privation the rule of transparently explaining the "how" down our journalism to beryllium shared by each writer successful the BBC - and convey you to those who are experimenting with caller ways to bash that.

"If you cognize however it's made, you tin spot what it says" - that's what our audiences person told us. Trust is earned and transparency volition assistance america gain it.

And arsenic for that "drone"? There are a fewer answers connected Ros Atkins' explainer video, which has had much than a cardinal views connected our website, and volition springiness radical a sensation of what Verify volition beryllium doing, time in, time out.