BBC Ukraine correspondent James Waterhouse was caught on a hot mic after the meeting of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump in the White House, saying: “This is the second time ever that a US president ****s someone in the Oval Office.”
This audio clip has been faked. Mr Waterhouse says it is AI-generated, and a full clip of the report shows no such comments were broadcast.
A video clip which appears to show the BBC’s Ukraine correspondent caught in a hot mic moment joking about the fiery meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy has been edited.
A ‘hot mic’ moment occurs when a microphone remains switched on and recording or broadcasting, without the speaker realising it is active.
The video, which has been shared on X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook, shows the end of a report from James Waterhouse about the sit-down meeting which escalated into a row between Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donald Trump and US Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office on 28 February.
Many of the posts sharing the video include captions such as: “Amazing things happen when the BBC forgets to cut its reporter’s feed while covering the Trump-Zelensky fiasco.”
As the camera switches to BBC presenter Lucy Grey, a voice that sounds like Mr Waterhouse’s can be heard saying: “Are you done? Ok. I saw a meme saying this is the second time ever that a US president ****s someone in the Oval Office."
These comments are followed by what appears to be laughter.
But this clip has been altered to add in this faked audio, which wasn’t broadcast on the BBC.
A spokesperson for the BBC told Full Fact the video is fake, adding: “We urge everyone to check links and URLs to ensure they are getting news from a trusted source.”
In a full length version of the BBC report uploaded to YouTube on 1 March, which has the same ‘Trump-Zelensky talks collapse’ banner as the viral clip, Ms Grey continues talking about the incident in the Oval Office and reads out a statement from Number 10 uninterrupted.
Mr Waterhouse linked to the same official clip on X and confirmed that the one being shared online isn’t real; describing it as an “AI-generated clip of me doing the rounds”.
While we can confirm the audio isn’t genuine, we have not been able to verify whether it was created using Artificial Intelligence (AI), edited in some other way or was an impersonator.
Full Fact has previously written about the difficulties, even for professional audio experts, in establishing whether audio is real or not—and if it’s not real, how exactly it was faked.
But we have produced a guide that can help you spot audio clues that suggest a clip may not be real. We have previously debunked other suspected deepfake audio clips, including of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, President Trump, and London mayor Sadiq Khan.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because this clip has been edited, and the claimed hot mic moment wasn’t broadcast on the BBC.
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