The screenshot of an alleged N-TV telephone survey on the topic “Do you trust German media” is intended to be absurd.

Because as everyone knows: the added percentages in surveys like these should ideally add up to 100%. However, this is where the weakness lies in the screenshot shown, because the numbers add up to 104%.

Was the high level of trust in German media unjustified? Did N-TV even falsify a telephone survey in order to manipulate viewers? Let's look for the origin of this picture and the telephone survey.

image

Step 1: Simply search for this image or the mere screenshot of the telephone survey on Google. As a reminder: You can open the image search on Google either directly via the address https://www.google.at/imghp or alternatively via the search engine's homepage by clicking on the term “Images” at the top right. A slightly different input area then opens (in both cases). You will find the note “Google Images” and also a small symbol in the shape of a camera in the input field.

Yikes! There are different numbers there!

The image search reveals something astonishing: not only have the numbers been changed, the telephone survey itself is also fake. The image search brings up results from 2016 that show this exact image, but ask a different question. According to the rules “the older the location, the more original,” and “the larger / higher resolution the image, the more original,” the oldest location for this screenshot Sputniknews .

In this article from October 19, 2016, Sputniknews addresses the N-TV survey “Should Putin put Merkel in her place?” and uses this screenshot as the cover photo. In this original template, the numbers are again correct (17% & 83%), and the telephone survey is also displayed correctly.

Trivia

The most famous spreader of the fake image is probably Beatrix von Storch, who published the fake survey on December 20, 2017. This can still be seen on her Twitter account today:

Just 2 days later, Karsten Schmehl from Buzzfeed a correction to this image. Here he writes:

The image spread by Beatrix von Storch has a different question and someone has manipulated the percentages.

Schmehl also cites N-TV's response to von Storch's tweet, which clearly speaks of fake news.


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )