BBC forced to deny reporting outbreak of nuclear war after fake news clip goes viral

The BBC was last night forced to distance itself from a fake news clip reporting the outbreak of nuclear war after a video purporting to show hostilities between Russia and Nato was widely circulated online.

The three-minute clip, which appears to be set in the BBC News studio and uses the BBC logo, features a British presenter claiming armed conflict has broken out in the Baltic after a Russian aircraft was shot down.

It features footage of Russian naval ships launching cruise missiles, nuclear mushroom clouds, and shows the Queen being evacuated from Buckingham Palace.

“This video clip claiming to be a BBC news report about NATO and Russia has been circulating widely... We'd like to make absolutely clear that it's a fake and does not come from the BBC,” the corporation said on Twitter.

The clip is a shortened version of an hour-long video that has been uploaded to YouTube several times since 2016 with the disclaimer that it is a “fictional dramatization.”

It began widely circulating on social media, particularly WhatsApp, after it was edited and re-uploaded to YouTube on Monday without that disclaimer.

The video also features a new ending purporting to be a “nuclear attack warning” with the logos of the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office.

The presenter of the video told The Daily Telegraph he was employed by Benchmarking Assessment Group, an Irish talent headhunting company, to shoot the video that would be used as a “psychometric test” to see how “their clients react in a disaster scenario”.

“From the original YouTube posting it says very clearly that it is fictional. You’d have to be an idiot to believe it anyway, it doesn’t even look like a genuine BBC news report. It was never meant to,” said Mark Ryes, a British voice actor.

Mr Ryes said he filmed the video in front of a green screen in September 2016 and sent the footage to Benchmarking Assessment Group. He said he was unaware at the time that it would use the BBC logo.

“When it was made in September 2016 there was no such thing as fake news,” he said.

The video comes amid increasing concern that Russia is waging a “dirty tricks” campaign to spread disinformation online in the wake of US-led missile strikes against Syria, an ally of Moscow.

On Facebook, one user, Anas Muhammed Ibrahim from Nigeria, shared the video with the comment: “get somewhere safe too WWIII has started.”

Derryck Griffith from New York wrote on Facebook: “If this is indeed the case, then we are facing another potentially Global War with Russia,” before adding “none of the other Global TV stations are reporting this information. Therefore, I presume it may be false.”

The BBC said it felt the need to respond after its journalists were contacted by viewers who believed the video could be real.

“Over the last couple of days we have had people contact various BBC bureaux, mainly in Africa and Asia, as they had seen the video on WhatsApp and wanted to check if it was a real BBC report,” a spokesperson for the corporation said.

David Ringwood, Head of Assessment Services at Benchmarking Assessment Group, said he did not remember making the video and did not respond to further requests for comment.