On July 6ththe Facebook page “Anti-Liberal Page” and various other Facebook profiles (1, 2, 3, 4) published a video of US President Joe Biden awarding medals to Vietnam War veterans, asserting that Biden affixed the medal to a veteran backwards.
In 2011-2013, the deputy of the Russian Duma, Anton Belyakov, also published a post with the same content on Facebook. In addition, the video was disseminated by a number of Russian-language individual Facebook accounts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21) and Facebook groups (1, 2, 3).
The videos used in the above-mentioned Facebook posts are of low quality and do not show the medal clearly, but the original, better-quality footage shows Biden affixing the medal to the Vietnam War veteran Dwight Birdwell correctly.
The videos attached to the Facebook posts are of low quality, making it hard to identify the side of the medal awarded to the veteran. The videos only show the ribbon of the medial, which is quite short and is hanging around the veteran’s neck, while the tie prevents the medal from being seen clearly.
In the videos released by the American TV broadcasters, one can see clearly that Biden is attaching the medal to the veteran correctly. The close-up shots reveal that the veteran named Dwight Birdwell, like the other veterans, receives the medal of honour from the right side. In addition, the footage also the medal placed in the box before being presented to the veterans, while Birdwell is wearing it from that same side.
Notably, similar to Birdwell, the medals of other veterans are also being affixed correctly.
At a ceremony held at the White House on July 5th, the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, awarded the Medal of Honor to 4 military veterans who fought in the Vietnam War. According to Biden, the servicemen participating in the Vietnam War put themselves in danger and fought heroically to protect the nation’s values, although they did not receive proper recognition for it. According to Biden, the ceremony was aimed at upgrading previous honours they had received for their acts of valour.
The article has been written in the framework of Facebook’s fact-checking program. You can read more about the restrictions that Facebook may impose based on this article via this link. You can find information about appealing or editing our assessment via this link.
Read detailed instructions for editing the article.
Read detailed appeal instructions.
