What was claimed
The Telegraph published an article headlined “Keir Starmer considering building ‘emergency detainment camps’ on the Falkland Islands”.
Our verdict
False. The Telegraph has confirmed that it has not published any such article.
The Telegraph has not published an article about ‘emergency detainment camps’ in the Falklands
8 August 2024
An image that supposedly shows a recent Telegraph article headlined “Keir Starmer considering building ‘emergency detainment camps’ on the Falkland Islands” has been widely shared on social media. But it’s not real.
The Telegraph has pinned a post to its X account confirming the headline has been fabricated and no such article exists.
The image includes the name of a real Telegraph journalist, Fiona Parker, and gives the time and date the article was published as 11:21am on 7 August 2024. An entirely different article written by Ms Parker about a Conservative councillor’s wife being arrested was published at that time, and it is possible someone has edited the text of this article and screenshotted it to produce the faked image.
The fake article goes on to say: “The camps would be used to detain prisoners from the ongoing riots as the British prison system is already at capacity.”
The fake article has been shared widely on social media, in a number of different forms. Elon Musk, owner of X, shared a post by Britain First co-leader Ashlea Simon, which included the image of the fake article. Mr Musk’s post added the comment: “‘Detainment Camps’ …”
Mr Musk has since deleted his post, as has Ms Simon, who later said: “If I find out a post is fake (it happens). I delete it.” We have approached X and Britain First for comment.
Outbreaks of violent disorder have been occurring across the UK in the wake of a stabbing attack which killed three children and wounded others in Southport on 29 July.
It has been reported that the government has brought forward plans to make more than 500 new prison places available to deal with rioters arrested over the past week. But there’s been no suggestion these places would be anywhere other than the UK.
Misinformation can spread quickly during large-scale news events, and it’s important to verify information shared on social media with official sources. This is not the first time we’re written about faked content from real media outlets—we’ve written about several fake Guardian headlines on a range of topics and faked screenshots of Sky News posts about the Bondi stabbing attack in April.
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 Telegraph has not published the article about ‘emergency detainment camps’ as claimed.