Video shows party after concert, not celebration of insurance CEO's murder | Fact check
The claim: Video shows people celebrating in New York after UnitedHealthcare CEO was killed
A Dec. 6 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shares a video of people dancing and singing.
“NYC coming together to dance in the streets over the universal American love of (dead) CEOs,” text on the post reads. It also includes #healthcare, #insurance, #ceo, #nyc, #dancing, #celebrate and #united hashtags.
The post was liked more than 500,000 times in 4 days.
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Our rating: False
The video is miscaptioned. It was first shared in late November, about two weeks before the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and shows people celebrating after a concert.
Video taken from another user’s account
Thompson was shot and killed Dec. 4 outside a Manhattan hotel, spawning a multistate hunt for the killer. Luigi Mangione was arrested Dec. 9 in Pennsylvania and charged with murder.
Within hours of the shooting, anger began spewing out across social media about the insurance industry.
But the video featured in the Instagram post doesn't show people singing and dancing in response to Thompson's death. The same clip was first posted to Instagram Nov. 21. The people are singing "Unwritten," a song by Natasha Bedingfield, who performed Nov. 20 at Webster Hall in New York. The text on the video reads, "sidewalk party after the Natasha Bedingfield concert. nyc is unparalleled (sic)."
Text on the version attributing the video to NYC reaction strategically places new text over the description referencing Bedingfield.
Fact check: Post falsely links comedian to UnitedHealthcare CEO killing
Paste BN reached out to the social media user who shared the claim for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Snopes and PolitiFact also debunked the claim.
Our fact-check sources
- Raechel Burke, Nov. 21, Instagram post
- Bands in Town, accessed Dec. 9, Natasha Bedingfield New York Tickets, Webster Hall Nov 20, 2024
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