• LOC José Luis Perales denies his death: "I am more alive than ever"

Seven o'clock at night in Spain. In the list of Trendings Topics on Twitter, a name suddenly appears: José Luis Perales. Inevitably, everyone who was on the social network at that time clicked on the artist's name. What had happened to him? José Luis Perales had died. The reactions were immediate. One of the most beloved and valued Spanish artists had passed away. "D.E.P"; "How sad!"; "A big one is gone"... The reality: it was all fake news.

Hours later, not too many, the artist himself posted a video on his social network account denying the news: "I speak to you from London, a wonderful place where I have spent a few days with my children and my wife. Someone, with a bad idea, has said that I have died, and I am more alive than ever, happier than ever, and tomorrow we will be seeing each other in Spain."

News, videos, obituaries, condolences, artist profiles... Many media rushed to publish the news of his death quoting each other and without contrasting with José Luis Perales who dispatched the hoax with a lot of humor and a "we are very well. It's over."

No, José Luis Perales had not died, he was and is alive and kicking. How was it possible that dozens of media (most of them from Latin America) not only published the death of an artist who had not died, but also gave details of how he had died if everything was false?

They were very brief reports, of no more than two paragraphs, that were published in Mexican, Colombian and other parts of Latin American media, as well as in several accounts (many of them with Twitter verification) and also originating on the other side of the Atlantic. They all gave the same headline: "José Luis Perales dies of a myocardial infarction."

The hoax, which began long before seven o'clock in the afternoon Spanish time, led media around the world and even renowned journalists to begin writing and publishing heartfelt obituaries. On Twitter José Luis Perales had died, in reality, the Spanish artist while the social network was filled with condolences was having dinner with his family.

The hoax reached Wikipedia, which came to make an update in which the artist was given for dead on Monday, August 7.

The hoax about the death of José Luis Perales multiplied after -among many other media- the Mexican journalist Lalo Salazar, of Foro TV, reported the death. However, minutes later, the official Twitter account of the media published a video in which the journalist himself denied the news and apologized for the fake news: "José Luis Perales did not die. An apology for the information I released a few moments ago."

Discovering the origin of the hoax that was later picked up en masse by many media outlets – practically none Spanish – is complicated. Marcelino Madrigal, a well-known blogger who for years has been dedicated to denouncingthe abuses committed on the internet and also on social networks, has published a thread on Twitter that would answer the big question: who killed José Luis Perales?

According to Madrigal, you can "refine a search to find the origin of a news story, or a hoax." For this, the computer scientist uses two tools,s ince_time: and until_time:, two parameters that must be used, as he warns, with the UNIX format. Once this format has been achieved -for which it gives a link-, Madrigal points out that in "the case of Perales if we set the search between 2:00 Spanish time (19:00 GMT) and 21:30 the search will return many tweets since the hoax was already spread".

"But if we narrow the search between 20:00 (18:00 GMT) and 20:30 the results are very brief. Therefore it would be the time when it started, "says this computer scientist.

After narrowing the search to that time, Madrigal finds the origin of the hoax of the death of José Luis Perales: "Being chronologically the oldest tweet may be that the origin is Mexico. In this tweet, more previous, we even see a response to a tweet deleted from an account that also echoed this news / hoax, with more than 100k followers, and origin also in Mexico. "

In summary, the false death of José Luis Perales began at 18.00 Spanish time and its origin was a Mexican account. What was then the reason that, first, everyone believed it, and that many Latin American media and journalists took for granted information that was completely false? The answer is simple as several journalists and experts have pointed out: "nobody checked it, nobody checked if the information was true".

"You just needed to pick up a phone," says one of them. And this is precisely what the Spanish media did. A simple call from the news agencies EFE and Europa Press quickly denied a hoax that had become unstoppable in Elon Musk's social network.

"Several Twitter accounts and portals known for the dissemination of 'fake news' have caused alarm in Cuenca for reporting the death of singer-songwriter José Luis Perales, an extreme that Europa Press has been able to deny from sources close to the singer. According to sources consulted by Europa Press, the composer who resides in Castejón is still alive and has not died of a heart attack as these accounts have published, most of them linked to websites in South America, "collected the teletype sent to the media by Europa Press.

When the Spanish media and news agencies denied the death of José Luis Perales, all those media, news portals and Latin American journalists who published his death deleted the publication. However, although Perales took it with humor, the damage was already done.

The humor with which the artist had to deny his own death spread in the same way and at the same speed as the hoax of his death. José Luis Perales remained a Trending Topic for many more hours, but this time for the joy that he was still alive and for how well he reacted.

  • media

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Learn more