verify-media-authenticity

name	verify-media-authenticity
category	media
description	Verify media authenticity through provenance, source context, file examination, corroboration, manipulation analysis, and calibrated conclusions. Use when an image, audio clip, or video may be altered, miscaptioned, generated, or taken from another event.

verify-media-authenticity

Authenticate the claim about the media, not just the pixels.

When to use

• Use before consequential publication, investigation, moderation, or evidentiary reliance.
• Do not treat one detector score, missing metadata, or visual oddity as proof of fabrication.

Procedure

1. Write the precise claim: who or what, time, place, event, source, capture, edit, and publication history.
2. Preserve the received file, URL, message, headers, timestamps, hashes, and custody without repeated recompression.
3. Obtain the earliest available source and ask the provider about device, circumstances, transfer, edits, and witnesses.
4. Inspect container, codec, streams, metadata, thumbnails, frame timing, audio, edit boundaries, and inconsistencies while recognizing ordinary platform changes.
5. Search for earlier or alternate versions and trace reuse, cropping, captions, mirrors, and context.
6. Corroborate landmarks, weather, light, shadows, maps, schedules, language, sound, witnesses, and independent records.
7. Use manipulation or synthetic-media tools as one signal with known false positives, model limits, and preserved versions.
8. Maintain competing hypotheses: authentic and correctly contextualized, authentic but miscaptioned, edited without material deception, materially manipulated, generated, or inconclusive.
9. Record confidence, evidence, gaps, privacy, source risk, and what would change the finding.

Failure plan

• If verification could endanger a source, minimize contact and location disclosure.
• If evidence remains insufficient, label the result inconclusive rather than forcing authentic or fake.

Done

• An authenticity report records claim, source, provenance, custody, technical findings, corroboration, hypotheses, tools, limits, and confidence
• Independent evidence checks verify the conclusion is supported without relying solely on metadata, appearance, or one automated detector