Old Satirical Video Falsely Shared as Broadcast of 2024 Paris Olympics in Iran

This is an old satirical video from 2013 and is being falsely shared as a real telecast from Iran.

Fact-check: An old satirical video is going viral online to claim that Iran censors women athletes on 2024 Paris Olympics broadcast.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video of a compilation of videos showing censored versions of women participating in athletics competitions is going viral on social media to claim that this is how 2024 Paris Olympics was broadcasted in Iran.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

(Source: X/screenshot)

(Archives of more claims on social media can be seen here and here.)

What's the truth?: This video, which dates back to 2013, shows a cropped part from a satirical video shared to make a statement against Iranian politicians.

• It is completely unrelated to the ongoing Paris 2024 Olympics.

How did we find out the truth?: We performed a reverse image search on Google, which led us to a YouTube video shared by 'TheONTENTV' on 19 July 2013.

• The viral video starts at 2:07 timestamp and shows the same censor pattern on the clips of athletes.

• The whole video is satire made in response to some Iranian politicians who made statements against women watching and participating in sports.

• We contacted the people seen in the video, namely Saman Arbabi, an Iranian journalist, and Arash Sobhani, an Iranian television host.

Sobhani clarified that this is unrelated to the 2024 Paris Olympics and said, "This particular video was made as part of a satire program almost 10 years ago. I wrote and narrated the piece."

• The story will be updated once we get a reply from them.

• Additionally, the viral video shows Chaunte LOWE from Team USA participating in the women's High Jump at the AVIVA 2012 London Grand Prix. The video of the hurdles race was from the 400-Meter Hurdles for women during the IAAF World Junior Championships at the Montjuic Olympic Stadium in Barcelona, Spain.

Issue of censorship in Iran: We performed a relevant keyword search, but it did not return any relevant reports about such censorship of the 2024 Paris Olympics broadcasted in Iran.

• However, we did find reports about Iran censoring matches involving women players and referees in 2020 and 2021.

Conclusion: An old satirical video is going viral online to claim that Iran censors women athletes on 2024 Paris Olympics broadcast.

(NOTE: The story has been updated to add a quote from Sobhani.)

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