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Claim: A viral video on social media shows a rat interrupting an Al Jazeera news anchor during a live broadcast.
Verdict: False. The video has been digitally manipulated with artificial intelligence tools. There is also no evidence that such an incident happened at Al Jazeera’s studio.
Full Text
A ten-second video clip showing a rat interrupting a female Al Jazeera news anchor during a live broadcast has gone viral across social media platforms.
In the video, the anchor suddenly jumps out of her seat in shock upon seeing the rat, but quickly regains her composure and returns to continue the news presentation.
The clip, which appears genuine at first glance, has already garnered numerous engagements, including 98 likes, 21 comments, and 43 shares, as of Sunday, October 12, 2025.
It has also been circulated widely on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and WhatsApp.
Many social media users believe the clip to be genuine footage from Al Jazeera’s newsroom in Doha, Qatar. It also attracted thousands of views and humorous comments from Nigerians and other Africans.
Some users, like Salis Muhammad Moriki, compared how African media houses would have handled a similar situation.
“If this happens in an African or Nigerian studio in particular, our narration would be totally different.”
Another user, Musa Mamman, wrote, “I guess her heart skipped a beat! Ordinarily, I would assume such a well-kept studio would not harbour rodents, even though it looks like it’s being chased from somewhere outside the studio.”
Given its virality and potential to mislead, DUBAWA investigated the footage’s authenticity.
Verification
DUBAWA conducted a careful manual analysis of the video footage. We noticed some digital anomalies, typical of an altered video.
When the news anchor shrieks at the sight of the offending rat, she backs away from the table. And, when she returns, she places her hands on invisible parts of the table.
Moreover, when the anchor backs away from the table, she pushes the chair amidst the chaos. The chair swivels, changing the direction of its seat away from the anchor. But when the anchor returns to the table, she sits on the chair without readjusting or changing the seat’s direction to herself. She just mindlessly sits on nothing. This is usually evident in an edited video.
DUBAWA conducted a visual analysis to determine whether the video was genuine or fabricated.
Deepware, a video-analysis tool, detected 39 per cent of deepfake content in the video.
We also subjected the video clip to another AI video-detecting tool, Sensity, which summarised the clip as “suspicious.”
DUBAWA found no credible reports or statements from Al Jazeera confirming that such an incident ever occurred.
Conclusion
DUBAWA’s investigation shows that the video is AI-generated and digitally altered to appear real.
