Fake US news site spreads false claims about Kamala Harris

A website purporting to be a local San Francisco news station called KBSF-TV published an unsubstantiated claim Monday that Vice President Kamala Harris was involved in a hit-and-run accident that left a 13-year-old girl paralyzed in June 2011. Harris was California's attorney general at the time and is a longtime Bay Area resident.

An analysis of the article and website shows the story to be false. Public records and news reports contain no evidence of the hit-and-run incident. San Francisco police told CBS News they could not find any records of the incident. An analysis of a video accompanying the article found that CBS News included several photos from other, unrelated news stories.

Nevertheless, the story spread widely on social media before the page disappeared. Posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, containing the article and video were viewed more than 7 million times, and the story was also shared on Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. Pro-Russian channels on Telegram, the popular messaging app, which European officials are Investigation for alleged criminal activities on the platform, also shared the story and video.

Experts say this is the latest example of a fake news website aimed at spreading false claims ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

The claim

The KBSF-TV site, which looks like a local news station, was created as a WordPress blog on August 20 and went offline two days after the story was published. CBS News could not find any official records of a KBSF-TV in California, suggesting it is a fake site.

The woman seen in the five-minute video embedded in the article speaks about the alleged incident. In the video, her name is given as “Alicia Brown,” but in the article, it is “Alisha Brown.” An online search did not reveal anyone with the location, age, physical description, and name (including spelling variations) of the woman who could be contacted for comment.

CBS News identified several elements in the video that suggest the story is fabricated. A chest X-ray shown in the video appears to be from a medical journal, and the date printed on the image shows it was taken in 2004, several years before the alleged incident. An image of a car crash shown in the video is from a 2018 incident in Guam.

Before the page disappeared, the article was picked up by accounts with large followings on social media; prominent X-accounts – some with hundreds of thousands of followers – spread the story further on Tuesday, sharing screenshots of the article and the accompanying video.

Fake news sites

Hany Farid, a UC Berkeley professor who specializes in digital forensics and manipulated media, told CBS News he believes the video was staged. Farid said he tested both the voice and face from the video and saw no evidence that it was generated by an artificial intelligence.

“We are so busy with generative AI these days that we forget that you don’t actually need technology to lie,” said Farid.

When asked what the platforms are doing about false claims made by sites like KBSF-TV, X automatically replied that the PR team was busy. A Meta spokesperson linked to the company's external fact-checking program and a TikTok spokesperson said the reported video was removed for violating community guidelines. A Telegram spokesperson said the platform is developing a fact-checking tool. Google did not comment.

The Harris team did not respond to CBS News' request for comment.

KBSF-TV's website has since gone offline. The site and the unsubstantiated claim it published are the latest example of a fake news website spreading false information in the run-up to the November presidential election, experts say.

NewsGuard, a company that tracks online disinformation, previously identified more than 1,000 “unreliable, AI-generated” news websites that publish content based on trends on Google.

McKenzie Sadeghi, AI and foreign influence editor at NewsGuard, told CBS News that bogus websites are designed to look like legitimate news sites in order to deceive readers into believing the information is coming from a reliable and legitimate source.

Sadeghi said KBSF-TV's website resembles a network of more than 160 fake news websites linked to a former American deputy sheriff living in Russia named John Mark Dougan.

BBC Verify, The New York Times and others have previously reported on Dougan and the network of fake news sites. Researchers at Clemson University and Recorded Future have also linked Dougan to the network of websites through his IP address and other online records.

When CBS News contacted Dougan about the NewsGuard report on him and his involvement in creating the KBSF-TV website, he said, “I can't help your insinuations.”

Farid said KBSF-TV's website and the baseless claim it spread were a reminder that readers should be cautious when consuming news online.

“Social media is designed to manipulate you,” Farid said. “I think we need to find a way to trust that there are places where you can get reliable information and places where you can't get it, and we just need to [have to] distinguish again between these two things.”

In September, the Ministry of Justice charged two Russian nationals and confiscated More than 30 website domains were involved in an influence campaign that the Biden administration said was linked to the Russian government and aimed at rigging the 2024 presidential election.

“Covert efforts to sow discord and entice Americans to unwittingly consume foreign propaganda represent attacks on our democracy,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement announcing the charges.