APA fact check: No sleeping council at the meeting
In the Innsbruck municipal council, photography is allowed at the beginning of the meeting, after around 30 minutes photography should stop. A photo (screenshot from the video recording) of the last municipal council meeting and above all the interpretation causes discussions on social media. After a detailed video analysis, the APA fact check found that GR Gerhard Fritz was not sleeping.
INNSBRUCK. Political meetings can last a long time. That’s why we know pictures of politicians who make themselves comfortable at such appointments. Since this is often interpreted as disinterest or a lack of respect, such incidents cause anger among citizens. Now an often shared screenshot of a video transmission can be found online, which is supposed to prove that the Innsbruck municipal councilor Gerhard Fritz is said to have fallen asleep during a meeting. That’s wrong, the APA fact check states.
fact check
“The screenshot is not proof that the Fritz municipal council was asleep, but was taken during a movement by Fritz. The video recording of the meeting never shows that Fritz was asleep,” says the APA fact check team.
The picture is from the Innsbruck municipal council meeting on December 15, 2022, as is also stated in the post. The slightly more than ten-hour session is also available as a video recording.
GR Gerhard Fritz can never be seen asleep. Although a yawn can be observed (at 1:09.14), he did not take a “council nap” with his eyes closed and his head tilted, as is assumed in the post.
The exact location of the screenshot can be found with some effort if you check all the speeches by Janine Bex, chairwoman of the Innsbruck Greens. The posture of Bex and Fritz is relatively unique in the picture and can therefore be compared well with the video material. In fact, the exact time the screenshot was taken can be determined. In the Youtube video the spot can be found at 8:30.33. Fritz is clearly awake at this moment, blinks his eyes more often and moves his head. This means that the screenshot is far from evidence that the council was asleep and may even have been deliberately taken at this seemingly awkward moment to discredit Fritz.
News from city politics can be found in the political ticker of the district newspapers Innsbruck
Ticketing
The post was posted on December 16 by Gerechte Innsbruck, a party with a mandate in the Innsbruck municipal council that is close to the people and also known for populism.
When asked by the APA how they came to the conclusion that Fritz had slept, they referred to their “own perception at various municipal council meetings” and the screenshot. A question as to whether the non-descriptive screenshot was created by the user remained unanswered to the end.
APA Sources:
(1) Posting on Facebook: http://go.apa.at/xeA3lG0o (archived: http://go.apa.at/AoRg7dBP)
(2) Video recording of the session on Youtube: http://go.apa.at/0arDAKBA (archived: http://go.apa.at/nIEREtA3)
(3) Homepage “Just Innsbruck”: http://go.apa.at/DS4lDxbg (archived: https://perma.cc/97C6-G8BC)
(4) Tiroler Tageszeitung about “Just Innsbruck”: http://go.apa.at/FwKn3xq4 (archived: https://perma.cc/554A-MAQX)
APA fact check
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