FACT CHECK: Viral Image Claims To Show The White House Dark For The ’10th Night In A Row’

Elias Atienza | Senior Reporter

An image shared on Facebook over 1,000 times allegedly shows all the lights off at the White House for the 10th consecutive night following President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Verdict: False

The image, which dates back to 2014, has been digitally edited to remove lighting. Photos taken since Biden took office show the White House illuminated at night.

Fact Check:

Biden was sworn in as the 46th president on Jan. 20. A viral image purportedly depicting all the lights off at the White House circulated online on Jan. 30 with the caption claiming that it shows the “10th night in a row” that the building had been dark and that “no body [is] home.”

Through a reverse image search, Check Your Fact found that the image has been edited and predates Biden’s presidency by multiple years. The unaltered image was uploaded to iStock, a stock photo website by Getty Images, in December 2015. It also appears on the stock photo website Alamy, where the description states it was taken on July 9, 2014.

In the versions available on the stock photo websites, there is a light on in a room on the upper floor, and a lantern hanging from the portico is lit. In the doctored version, lights such as the lantern and the window on the upper floor have been digitally removed, and the picture overall seems to have been darkened.

Photos taken since Biden took office also show lights on at the White House in the evening. One photo taken on Jan. 30 shows exterior lights illuminating the White House, and another photo taken Jan. 23 shows what appear to be several lights on both inside and outside.

Lights at the White House “go off every night around 11 p.m.,” according to a June 1, 2020, tweet from CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins. (RELATED: Viral Image Claims To Show All The Lights Out At The White House During George Floyd Protests)

This isn’t the first time the doctored photo has been used to suggest that the White House has gone dark. In June 2020, social media users shared the same image, falsely claiming it showed all the lights off during a May 31, 2020, protest sparked by George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody.

Elias Atienza

Senior Reporter
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