Morphed Image of Time Magazine Cover With PM Modi Shared as Real One

The real cover shows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's face with the words 'Delete Facebook' across it and not PM Modi.

The edited cover is based on a recent graphic made by the magazine, featuring Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A morphed image of a TIME magazine cover showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a graphic of a dialogue box prompting the reader to ‘Delete Fascism’ with the options to ‘Cancel’ or ‘Delete’ is being shared on social media.

However, we found that the image was morphed. We found the actual cover on the publication's website which shows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on its cover, with the text ‘Delete Facebook’ across his face.

The cover comes shortly after a former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen went to federal agencies in the United States of America with internal documents, which showed that Facebook “prioritised profits over public safety”.

CLAIM

The image of the TIME magazine cover is being shared with various different claims criticising the BJP.

An archived version of this tweet can be accessed here.

More claims with the same image can be seen here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

After observing the image carefully, we saw the date stamp showing ‘Oct 25/Nov 1, 2021’ and the titles and author names for two articles on the cover. The date stamp gave us a clue that the image may be derived from the TIME magazine’s upcoming issue.

Details on the image helped us find the original one.

We looked up the TIME vault but the cover has not yet been updated there. However, we found a Facebook post on their verified page, which they posted on 7 October.

Like the original cover, the edited image carried the cover articles titled 'Inside the Damage by Billy Perrigo' and 'Roger McNamee's Change Can't Wait'. The only difference between the text is that the edited version misspells Perrigo's last name as 'Perrico'.

We looked up these articles and came across the one published by Perrigo on TIME’s website, which carried an image of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Similarly, a search for Roger McNamee’s article also led us to an article on the website containing the same image of Zuckerberg.

The cover articles discussed Facebook's internal policies and how they affect the platform's users and how, by not dissolving a team, Facebook could have handled its newest issue better. Neither of them have anything to do with PM Modi.

Clearly, an image of Mark Zuckerberg on TIME magazine’s cover was morphed to replace him with PM Modi and add the words ‘Delete Fascism’ onto the graphic.

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