Following the first US presidentgial debate, hosted by CNN on June 27, 2024, a 31-second video has gone viral on social media, claiming that CNN Political Director David Chalian referred to former First Lady Michelle Obama as “Big Mike”.
The Facebook post reads: CNN Pundit calls “Michelle” Obama BIG MIKE!! They know!!!
The above post can be seen here. (Archive)
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the claim, and found it to be digitally altered.
Conducting a Reverse Image Search of the video keyframes, the NM team found a 42-second clip from CNN’s live coverage, posted on June 28, 2024. This clip shows the original, unaltered footage of the flash poll discussion. It starts with CNN Political Director David Chalian, the network’s vice president of political coverage, asking: “Who won the debate?”
#BREAKING | Flash poll results: 67% of CNN viewers say Trump won the debate to Biden’s 33% pic.twitter.com/ww6U4uqocz
— VOZ (@Voz_US) June 28, 2024
In the first 15 seconds of the altered video, the original audio from the segment is used. Chalian states: “Who won the debate? We asked debate watchers in our instant poll, and the answer is a resounding, ‘Donald Trump did’. Sixty-seven per cent of debate watchers in our poll say Donald Trump won the debate tonight, while 33% say Joe Biden won the debate tonight.”
At the 15-second mark of the altered video, the genuine audio ends, and the edited audio begins. Here, Chalian is heard saying: “I mean, guys, at this point I don’t give a shit if you bring out Gavin Newsom or maybe Hillary Clinton or even Big Mike … uhhh, I mean, Michelle Obama. Sorry, I don’t know why I said ‘Big Mike’. Back to you, Jake.”
Using Hive Moderation’s AI-generated content Detection tool to analyse the doctored clip, we found that the first 15 seconds scored a 10.7% likelihood of being “not likely to be AI-generated”. The second half of the clip scored 100% as “likely to be AI-generated”.
Thus, we can conclude that Chalian did not call Michelle Obama Big Mike. The 31-second-long video clip used to support this claim includes fake audio. While the first 15 seconds of the clip’s audio are genuine, the second half is fabricated.
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