Man in Viral Video with Amara Konneh Is not Oscar Bloh of the ECC, Local Voices Liberia Clarifies
On November 9, a video surfaced online with a claims 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.
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.
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 a member of the Unity Party, denying that the man in the video is not Mr. Bloh.
Rating Justification
We fact checked the 47-minute 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.
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