‘Foreign agents creating fake BBC news’

FAKE videos claiming to be BBC News reports are part of a “state-backed disinformation” campaign by foreign powers, according to the director of the corporation’s World Service Group.

Last week, a clip reporting the outbreak of nuclear war between Russian and Nato forces was circulated on social media. Featuring “footage” of Russia launching cruise missiles, it was stamped with the BBC News logo and appeared to be set in a BBC studio.

The corporation was forced to release a statement saying the video was false. Jamie Angus, who heads the World Service and BBC World News, said combating “fake news” was “an increasingly large part of my world”.

Mr Angus said the videos originated from different places, but some may be linked to foreign governments.

“Quite often we find people just making fake news, particularly in video form, putting BBC branding on it and just setting it off out into the world,” he told The Drum website. “I’m absolutely certain there are a mixture of motives; some of it is just pranking and mischievousness; some of it is clickbait just trying to farm impressions for ad fraud.

“Then there is a category of fake news which is genuinely malicious and sometimes state-backed disinformation, and the roots of that are very hard to trace.”

He added that fake news “is going to remain relevant for many years to come, partly because of the invidious nature of some state-funded players”.