On February 27th, 2022, Facebook users “Natalia Eliseeva” and “Наталия Завьялова” posted several screenshots claiming that CNN Afghanistan’s Twitter reported the killing of journalist Bernie Gores by Taliban members in Kabul, while CNN Ukraine’s second screenshot states that American activist Bernie Gores was killed by a Russian-backed separatist in Ukraine. The posts assert that this is part of Western propaganda.
On February 27th, the Facebook user “Lela Praga” also shared an identical post on their profile.
The tweets shown in the post belong to fake accounts. Bernie Gores was killed neither in Afghanistan nor in Ukraine, and the reason for that is that he does not exist at all. The person shown in the fake tweets is a famous gamer Jordie Jordan.
The screenshots shown in the post of “Lela Praga” were published by CNN cloned, fake Twitter accounts. The person depicted in the photos is not Bernie Gores, but a professional computer game player (so-called gamer) Jordi Jordan.
The information was verified by Factcheck.org. The article states that the fake tweet was posted on an unverified Twitter account, @CNNUKR, which has already been blocked. According to Factcheck.org, the Twitter account was created this month and had only 129 subscribers.
A second fake Twitter account, @CNNAfghan, shared the same photo in August, claiming that it depicted a journalist killed by the Taliban.
In fact, even in this case, the photo did not show Bernie Gores, but gamer Jordie Jordan, who has his own YouTube channel and publishes live videos of video games.
The photo of Jordi Jordan used in fake tweets can be found on Wikitubia, a Wikipedia-style resource about YouTube.
About “Lela Praga”
The Facebook profile “Lela Praga” uses a profile picture frame supporting the Conservative movement and Alt-Info. In addition, the user likes the support pages of the Conservative Movement and Levan Vasadze.
The account has been suspected of spreading disinformation regarding the Russia-Ukraine war in the past as well.
- Disinformation About the Crucifixion of a Warrior from Donbas by the Azov Battalion
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