The image in question has been a pivotal part of the run-in to the British election.
Earlier this week, a photograph emerged of Jack Williment-Barr, a four-year-old with suspected pneumonia, who was forced to lie on a pile of coats on the floor of a Leeds hospital.
It was shared widely on social media and when Boris Johnson was confronted with the image, he bizarrely took the journalist’s phone and put it in his own pocket.
Doubt then began to surround the validity of the image, after a woman had sparked claims that the viral photo had been staged by Jack’s mother.
The woman in question claimed she was not the origin of the false claims, but that she had seen them on her Facebook timeline and copied and pasted them.
BBC Newsnight aired a segment on the entire debacle on Tuesday night that encapsulates just how messy the entire thing has become.
They noted that the woman in question’s son has been posting pro-Conservative Party posts and is friends with Matt Hancock, the current UK Secretary of State for Healthcare.
It showed just how quickly stories like this can travel online and how difficult it is for there to be any accountability in this type of situation.
The video does a stellar job at explaining the entire thing, so we’ll leave it to them:
A woman who had sparked claims that the viral photo of Jack sleeping on a hospital floor was staged has spoken to #Newsnight.
She insists she was an innocent party and her son says it had nothing to do with him. pic.twitter.com/0TStJQz7KM
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) December 10, 2019
The British General Election is due to take place on Thursday, 12 December.
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