A video (here, here) that appears to show American journalist Chris Hedges reciting a poem about Gaza at the 2024 Academy Awards ceremony is making rounds on social media. We will verify this claim through this article.
Claim: This video shows journalist Chris Hedges reciting a poem on Gaza at the Academy Awards ceremony in 2024.
Fact: The video is edited. It was created and uploaded on YouTube not by Chris Hedges but by a drag artist and filmmaker named Indie Nile. Therefore, the claim made in the post is False.
To fact-check this claim, we first watched the full video of the 2024 Academy Awards ceremony available on Disney+Hotstar. We found no evidence of Chris Hedges reciting a poem about Gaza during the ceremony.
We also examined the comments under the viral video where a user pointed out the video’s true origin. Based on this comment, we searched for Indie Nile on the internet and found his YouTube channel, which included a higher-quality, longer version (here) of the viral video.
According to the ‘About’ section, Indie Nile is a drag artist and filmmaker (his Instagram) who posts informational and opinion videos. The description of the YouTube video stated: ‘This year’s ceremony was missing an important apology. Enter Indie….’ confirming Indie Nile as the creator of the video, not Chris Hedges and also that footage from the origianal awards ceremony and some other photos were used to create the viral video’.
The description also mentioned that the audio used in the video is from ‘Journalist Chris Hedges’ letter to a child in Gaza.’ and gave a link to it. Through further keyword searches, we found that Chris Hedges recited this letter in a talk titled ‘The Genocide in Gaza,’ which he described as a letter he wrote to the children of Gaza.
To sum up, the video claiming to show Chris Hedges reciting a poem on Gaza at the Oscars in 2024 is an edited video created by Indie Nile, not an actual event from the ceremony.
