What was claimed
A Daily Telegraph article headlined “Mass migration is slowly bankrupting the UK” used an image of Notting Hill Carnival.
Our verdict
The real article’s header image is a generic UK border sign, not the Notting Hill Carnival.
Screenshot of Telegraph article on migration shared with different image
12 February 2024
An altered screenshot of an opinion article in the Daily Telegraph has been circulating on social media.
The image being shared on Facebook supposedly depicts a comment piece, in mobile format, published on 8 February with the headline: “Mass migration is slowly bankrupting the UK.”
This was the correct headline and date of the original article on the Telegraph website—which has since been updated to replace “the UK” with “Britain”.
However, the header image accompanying the story in the screenshot is not the one that appeared on the Telegraph’s website.
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Where does the image come from?
A reverse image search shows that the photo in the Facebook post was taken at London’s Notting Hill Carnival in 2016.
This was not the image used by the Telegraph.
The current version of the article online, a version archived soon after it was first published, and the paper’s social media channels, all feature a generic image of a UK border sign, not the Notting Hill Carnival image.
Only a photo of the author accompanied the story in the print edition on 9 February.
The Telegraph told Full Fact that the UK border sign image has “always been the lead and the only image in our comment piece”.
Altered headlines and images on trusted news outlets can be used to distort reporting or confuse issues. We have previously reported on fake headlines that were never published, including one about Israelis selling shares ahead of the 7 October attack and another warning of ‘asymptomatic global warming’ supposedly from the Irish Independent.
It’s important to consider whether something is genuine before sharing. Our guides to spotting misleading images and videos can help you to do this.
Image courtesy of Martin Deutsch
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because the image of the Notting Hill carnival included in the screenshot was never used to accompany the article in any edition of the Daily Telegraph.