BBC Verify Correspondent Merlyn Thomas is part of the unit that launched in May 2023 and is made up of about 60 journalists on the front line of fighting disinformation that spreads through images, video and audio.
The specialist team use open-source intelligence (gathering and analysing publicly available information), satellite imagery, data analysis and forensic techniques to debunk information that is usually about areas of conflict including Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Iran.
In June 2025, the BBC launched Verify Live, a blog that tells audiences in real time what claims it is investigating and how they are being checked.
“More and more, we're being fed information that we don't really understand – from every single angle. Finding out what’s true is really hard,” Thomas explains. “Misinformation doesn't always spread because people are trying to twist a narrative – they are sharing things because they're worried or care about a particular issue, but in doing so, they’re acting really quickly. It all contributes to such a bad information economy.”
According to an Ofcom study from November 2024, 26 per cent of UK adults say they have used a fact checker website or tool at least once. BBC Verify is most likely to be used and heard of, with one in five saying they’ve used it at least once, and one in 20 saying they do so regularly.
BBC Verify’s aim is to give its audience the full picture, saying what it knows, what it doesn’t know and how it knows, providing answers for the who, what, when, where and why questions.
“There's two questions we ask ourselves about misinformation: is it having real world harm? And how viral is it? We don't want to be the ones platforming misinformation, but if something has already been seen by so many people, we will address it,” says Thomas, who studied French and Arabic at university in order to speak to people in places where events are happening.
She joined the BBC as a Creative Access trainee, starting off in radio, then climate disinformation.
Thomas explains that you don’t need special tools to do your own checks at home, as open-source intelligence is accessible to everyone. Reverse image search, like Google Lens, allows you to check whether a frame from a video has previously been shared online.
“A classic example is wildfires,” she says. “You’ll see people sharing videos of wildfires saying, ‘This is in XYZ,’ but it’s actually a video from years ago. We had it a lot with misinformation about strikes between India and Pakistan. By doing a simple reverse image search, you’ll see it’s not true and it’s old.”
Geolocation is purely down to the human eye if you’re trying to find out where something is. “You’re looking for clues: a pylon, an intersection of a field, the direction of sunlight to help with timing,” says Thomas. “It is down to gut instinct. Sometimes you’re like, ‘Does this feel like it’s real?’ It’s better to be cautious than not. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
She also shares the top things you can ask yourself: “Who shared it? Why is this person sharing this? Do they have an agenda? Is this new? Is this old? Is there something fishy about this video? Can you hear any sounds? Can you hear the language? We also now have to ask: is this AI-generated or manipulated? Can you read the signs in the video? Do the fingers, the mouth and the teeth move weirdly?”
If you’re unsure, it’s best to visit a trusted news source. BBC Verify’s stories are put out on television, radio, digital and social media. “We are trying to reach people where they are, so we're doing more and more social media videos to try and debunk or cut through the noise of what's happening in a particular place.
“People in echo chambers, and not having as much conversation across different political spectrums, is an issue, especially during an election. If you think one thing, you're probably only going to be fed one thing, and if you think another thing, you're probably only going to be fed another thing. Those two streams are just completely different, so that's obviously a huge problem when it comes to really big stories, which can be really divisive. Those both in tandem can just create chaos.”
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Meet the BBC's last reporter remaining in Russia: "It feels like we're in the eye of the storm"I'm Cathy Newman, and this is how I'm embracing our new political landscape with my brand new showSome videos might take just 10 minutes to verify. Thomas says they were quickly able to verify the synagogue attack in Manchester in October 2025. “There were really obvious signs of where it was. There were local reporters on the ground.”
Others can take much longer. “With a very foggy, misty video in Ukraine over some fields, where the only thing you can see is a pylon, we try to find any other videos that might be easier to verify to help us understand what's happening. If not, we plough on with that same video and just keep going.”
All the different teams across the BBC work together to verify the information, including different language services, the World Service, people in the location and trusted experts on AI manipulation. If there’s a breaking news story, everyone tries to find as many videos as they can online to see what it reveals about a situation.
As part of the job, Thomas often deals with really graphic material. She says the story she’s proudest to have worked on is when sources shared a secret folder full of hundreds of faces of victims who were killed by the Iranian government. The close-up images leaked to BBC Verify were taken from inside the Kahrizak Forensic Medical Centre.
Some of the people had multiple pictures taken of them from different angles. After analysing 392 photos, BBC Verify identified 326 people. In that instance, they explained why they couldn't share more about how they knew what they knew to protect their sources.
Thomas says, “It was really hard, because I’m looking through faces and faces of dead people, matching them up, asking colleagues who are peer-reviewing me, ‘Do you think this face is the same as this face but from a different angle and the light’s a bit different?’ We found people mourning them online, so we could confirm that they were dead. They’re names, faces and numbers we wouldn't have otherwise. For example, there were 18 women.
“In a situation where we still don't really know what's happened, and the death toll, and with so many different numbers flying around of how many people have been killed, when it’s so hard to get information about what’s happening on the ground, to be able to bring some clarity and some information that we painstakingly verified – that's when I feel like my work is impactful. It has the power to bring information and clarity where there's a lot of confusion and misinformation.”
AI-generated content, including images, video and audio, is a large source of misinformation and disinformation, and is only going to become more prevalent as AI advances so rapidly. “AI-generated audio is the scariest thing, because it is the hardest to detect. I think we’re going to see more and more of that. In the future, it will probably be a big issue we're going to have to tackle,” says Thomas.
“There are loads of AI detection tools, and we are developing our own, but they are developing much slower and are nowhere near as good as the AI being used to generate those images, videos and audio.”
We no longer just consume news in a daily, scheduled way, where we pick up a newspaper in the morning or turn on the TV in the evening. We now have access to 24/7 updates. In an age of increasingly fake news and misinformation, trust is at a premium.
While the BBC remains a major source of news in the UK, a 2026 study by the Good Growth Foundation think tank found that public trust in the BBC has plummeted more over the last decade than any UK institution except for the government, with 50 per cent of the public trusting the corporation less than 10 years ago.
And BBC Verify has faced criticism for its accuracy. When asked about this, a BBC spokesperson told us: “Our reporting goes through robust accuracy checks before being published. In instances where we are made aware of any errors in our reporting after publication, we will investigate quickly. This is done by senior editors.
“Where necessary, we will make changes to our output. We aim to be as transparent as possible for audiences, and publish updates that reflect any changes we make.”
Thomas says, “We always prioritise accuracy over fastness. We have peer reviews to make sure that everything is double-checked before it gets to the editing stage. Then we do AI checks.”
View oEmbed on the source websiteIn September 2022, a promo for the BBC’s editorial guidelines was released, concluding with the words “Trust is earned.” Deborah Turness, CEO, BBC News and Current Affairs, wrote, “And we can’t take it for granted.” BBC Verify’s mission is to combat misinformation through transparency.
“It’s really hard, it’s a challenge,” Thomas admits of her role, “but we are a team that's totally up for it. I'm really proud of what we do. I genuinely feel really privileged to be able to work on the stories that I do. We have a responsibility to deliver the truth.”
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