A website called KBSF-TV, which describes itself as a local San Francisco news outlet, published an unsubstantiated claim on Monday that Vice President Kamala Harris was involved in a hit-and-run that left a 13-year-old girl paralyzed in June 2011. Harris was California’s attorney general at the time and is a longtime Bay Area resident.
An analysis of the article and the site found the story to be false. No evidence of a hit-and-run has been presented in public records or news reports. San Francisco police told CBS News they found no records of the incident. A CBS News analysis of the video attached to the article included several photos from other, unrelated news articles.
CBS News
Nevertheless, the story was widely circulated on social media before the site disappeared. A post on X (formerly Twitter) featuring the article and video was viewed more than seven million times, and the story was also shared on Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. A pro-Russian channel on the popular messaging app Telegram posted a message to the effect that European authorities Under investigation An individual who was arrested for alleged criminal activity on the platform also shared the story and video.
Experts say it’s the latest example of a fake news site designed to spread false claims ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Claims
The KBSF-TV site was created as a WordPress blog on August 20th to give the appearance of a local news outlet, and was taken offline two days after publishing the article. CBS News discovered it was a fake site after they were unable to find any official records of KBSF-TV in California.
A woman appears in a five-minute video embedded in the article to describe the incident. Her name is identified in the video as “Alicia Brown,” but in the article as “Alesha Brown.” An online search did not reveal anyone matching the woman’s location, age, physical description, or name (including spelling variations) who could be contacted for comment.
CBS News identified several elements that indicate the video is fabricated: A chest X-ray shown in the video appears to have been taken from a medical journal, and a date printed on the image indicates it was taken in 2004, several years before the alleged incident. Images of a car crash shown in the video are from an accident that occurred in Guam in 2018.
Before the site disappeared, the article was picked up by accounts with large followings on social media, and prominent X-accounts, some of which have hundreds of thousands of followers, further spread the news on Tuesday, sharing screenshots of the article and an accompanying video.
Fake news sites
Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in digital forensics and manipulated media, told CBS News he believes the video is faked. He said he has examined both the voices and faces in the video and found no evidence it was generated by AI.
“We’ve become so obsessed with generative AI these days that we forget that we don’t actually need technology to lie,” Farid said.
When asked what the platform is doing to counter false claims from websites like KBSF-TV, X sent an automated response saying its PR team is busy. A Meta spokesperson linked to the company’s third-party fact-checking program, while a TikTok spokesperson said the reported videos were removed for violating community guidelines. A Telegram spokesperson said the platform is developing a fact-checking tool. Google did not respond to a request for comment.
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment from CBS News.
The KBSF-TV website has since been taken offline, but experts say the site and the unfounded claims it contained are the latest example of fake news sites spreading false information ahead of the November presidential election.
NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, has so far identified more than 1,000 “low-trust, AI-generated” news websites that publish content based on Google Trends.
Mackenzie Sadeghi, AI and foreign influence editor at NewsGuard, told CBS News that the fake websites are designed to look like real news sites in order to trick readers into believing the information comes from a trustworthy, legitimate source.
Sadeghi said the KBSF-TV website is similar to a network of more than 160 fake news websites linked to John Mark Daughan, a former American deputy sheriff living in Russia.
BBC Verify, The New York Times and other media have previously reported on Duggan and his network of fake news sites, and researchers from Clemson University and Recorded Future have also linked Duggan to a network of fake news sites through IP addresses and other online records.
When contacted by CBS News about NewsGuard’s reporting on him and whether he was involved in the creation of the KBSF-TV website, Duggan said, “I don’t know what they’re implying.”
Farid said the KBSF-TV website and the unfounded claims it spreads are a reminder to readers to exercise caution when consuming news online.
“Social media is designed to manipulate you,” Farid said. “I think we have to find a way to have some confidence that there are places where you can get trustworthy information and places where you can’t, and we have to distinguish between the two again.”
In September, the Department of Justice Charged With two Russian nationals Confiscated More than 30 website domains have been implicated in what the Biden administration claims is an influence campaign linked to the Russian government attempting to manipulate the 2024 presidential election.
“This covert effort to stomp division and trick Americans into unwittingly believing foreign propaganda is an attack on our democracy,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement announcing the indictments.
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Eliel Delzer
