An alleged wedding photo of Nancy Pelosi is currently circulating on the Internet. It is said to show the Speaker of the US House of Representatives with Chinese journalist Hu Xijin. But the whole thing is a fake.
The visit of US top politician Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan caused a stir politically and diplomatically and has already led to harsh reactions from the Chinese government. The visit of the US delegation also sparked discussions online. In addition to arguments for and against the visit and US support for Taiwan, false claims and fake content are now circulating. Among other things, this adventurous – and not to be taken too seriously – story.
Claim: “When they were young: Nancy Pelosi and Hu Xijin,” wrote a Twitter user of a photo purported to show the Speaker of the US House of Representatives and former Editor-in-Chief of the Chinese newspaper Global Times. “A perfect couple,” commented another user.
DW fact check: Wrong.
The photo was photoshopped. It consists of two composite, older pictures: One shows the young Nancy Pelosi, but in the original not next to Xijin, but with her family. Seated is her father Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., also a politician. Pelosi, third from left, posted the picture to Flickr with the caption, “With family as a young girl.” It also appeared on one of her campaign pages. The other picture shows the young Hu Xijin. A reverse image search leads to a tweet from the journalist writing about his time in the Chinese military (“unforgettable years”) and adding the photo that is now included in the alleged wedding picture.
Both parts of the alleged wedding picture can be traced back by means of archive research and reverse image search. We also did a forensic image analysis and discovered different color compositions that indicate a different pixel composition and thus a manipulation. This exposes the picture as a fake, which some users understood as satire, but others believed to be real.
The age difference between Pelosi and Xijin alone could have made you suspicious: Pelosi is 82 years old, Hu Xijin is 20 years younger. In this photo from 1960 with the future US President John F. Kennedy, Pelosi is similar in age to the alleged wedding photo. Xijin was just born in 1960, which also excludes the authenticity of the picture.
The background of the fake picture: Internet users apparently made fun of the picture collage: Hu Xijin is a sharp critic of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. He pleaded on the Chinese network Weibo for “military countermeasures” should Pelosi visit Taiwan because it is “the only language that the US and Taiwan understand”. He even wrote on Twitter that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army should “shoot down” Pelosi’s plane en route to Taiwan if it didn’t turn back. As a result, his Twitter account was temporarily blocked and Xijin deleted the tweet.
A wedding picture of Pelosi and Xijin seems so absurd against this background that many users found it funny to see both in one picture, and as a couple at that.
Author: Rachel Baig, Joscha Weber
The original of this post “After a visit to Taiwan: The false love story about Nancy Pelosi” comes from Deutsche Welle.
