What was claimed
A Guardian article reports that an episode of Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg was taken down after a clash between the BBC presenter and Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
Our verdict
False. This is not a real article and no such episode ever existed.
No, a BBC episode wasn’t taken down following a clash between Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Laura Kuenssberg
A fake Guardian article promoting a cryptocurrency platform is being shared on Facebook.
The fake article claims that the BBC presenter Laura Kuenssberg confronted the British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe about his financial affairs in an episode of her Sunday programme. The episode was supposedly “removed from BBC iPlayer and all BBC websites within hours of broadcast”.
This never happened.
Links being shared on the platform take users to a convincing replica of the Guardian’s website featuring images supposedly showing Sir Jim appearing on Ms Kuenssberg’s Sunday show. But these links are completely unrelated to the newspaper’s real web address (theguardian.com).
No such article has ever been published on the Guardian’s website and Sir Jim has never been interviewed on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
What is more, the image of Sir Jim and Ms Kuenssberg arguing contains a SynthID watermark, meaning it was created using Google AI tools.
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The article goes on to promote a cryptocurrency trading platform and encourages users to click a link to register with the company. (The specific platform it referred to changed while we were writing this article.)
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen fake Guardian articles shared on social media. We’ve also fact checked a number of false claims about supposed clashes between Ms Kuenssberg and high-profile politicians in recent months.
Before sharing content like this on social media, first consider whether it comes from a reliable source. Our Full Fact toolkit can help you do this.