Social Media Falls For Fictional Story of Teacher Bullied on Zoom
The information has been taken from a Facebook post that clearly stated that it is a fictional story.
Several social media users shared a viral image claiming to show a 55-year-old teacher allegedly being bullied in an online class on Zoom amid COVID-19.
However, we found that the information has been taken from a Facebook post that clearly stated in the end that it is a fictional story written “in solidarity to all teachers who are victims of Zoom bombing by shameless students.”
CLAIM
Several media outlets including The Tribune, India Today, India TV, Loksatta,and International Business Times also fell for the fictional story and went on to publish it as a real incident.
While The Tribune and India Today have deleted their articles and International Business Times has updated its article, others are yet to follow suit.
Danish Manzoor, editorial director-Asia, IB Times had tweeted the same claim, and later issued an update with correction.
The IB Times article mentioned that the information was taken from an Instagram account by the name ‘tedthestoner’ who had later added a disclaimer that it is a fictional story.
Several social media users have shared the viral image with the same claim on Facebook.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
The Instagram handle of ‘tedthestoner’ had credited the fictional story to Facebook user ‘Syed Mohamad Fahim.’
We found that the user had shared the same text on 30 June with the last line mentioning: “I write this fictional story in solidarity to all teachers who are victims of Zoom bombing by shameless students. May Allah give you patience and these students hedayah.”
To find out the context of the viral image, we conducted a Google reverse search which led us to an article published on 16 July. The article mentioned that Facebook user Hafiz R Rahman had uploaded the viral video from where the screenshot has been taken.
The Bangladeshi user had uploaded the video on 29 June and identified the man in seen in the video as "Mohiuddin Sir,” a physics teacher at the Milestone College, Dhaka.
The user identifies himself as a former student of the said teacher and posted the video where the students can be heard making fun of the teacher.
In a series of Facebook posts, Hafiz mentioned that many people blamed him for not informing the college authority before uploading the video
“I would have deleted the video if the college authorities had taken any steps or informed me that they would take steps. But nothing like that was reported,” his FB post mentioned.
The Quint has not independently verified the claims being made by Hafiz in his Facebook posts. However, it is clear that media outlets and social media users fell for a fictional story.
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