Fake news stories spread on the internet like wildfire. And the month of October has been no different.
Here’s The Quint’s roundup of Webqoof, ie, fake news stories that were busted in the month of October.
Fake News May be a National Security Threat – 1965 War Is Proof
In my growing years and actually till very late, I considered the media, especially print, an entity which could never lie. During the 1965 India-Pakistan War, after listening to news broadcasts, I came to know for the first time that Pakistan claimed to be successful in the same battle that we had won; perhaps that’s when I realised that it wasn’t such a truthful world.
Cut to 2009. Another news story, obviously complete fake, which shocked me was published by Islamabad’s Daily Mail. On 11 September 2009, the headline of a news story read: ‘RAW supplied prostitute women to Indian Army,’ with an accompanying blurb, ‘Indian Army to Deploy Prostitutes as Women Battalion in Held Kashmir.’
This was a news story by fictitious writers who were supposedly the newspaper’s ‘non-existent’ New Delhi correspondents.
Read the full story here.
Fake Image of ABP Opinion Poll Shows Big Win For Cong in Gujarat
As Gujarat gears up for the much-awaited Assembly elections, a fake image has gone viral on social media that predicts a big win for the Congress.
The image is a photoshopped screenshot from an ABP News show, which was aired on 31 August 2017, and discussed an opinion poll conducted by Lokniti-CSDS for the Gujarat elections.
The fake image shows the Congress set to win 144-152 seats in the 182 member Gujarat assembly, while the BJP would be reduced to just 26-32 seats.
However, a look at the original news bulletin reveals that it was the BJP that was predicted to win 144-152 seats in the opinion poll, with the Congress getting 26-32 seats.
Watch the original ABP News bulletin from 17:55 below:
Read full story here.
Fake Video, Claiming Bengaluru Airport Was Flooded, Is From Mexico
A 28-second video showing a flooded tarmac of an airport has been doing rounds on social media, especially in Bengaluru. The video was said to be taken at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) following torrential rains.
Bengaluru International Airport Limited, which operates KIA, has categorically said that no flooding has been reported at the airport. A further scrutiny has also revealed that the video was, in fact, taken at an airport in Mexico.
The two videos claiming the same have not been deleted from YouTube yet. The videos were uploaded on 7 October and 15 October by Amazing Original Videos and Ashok Kumar.
But what is the truth? Read the full story here.
Fake News! Photo of Activist Wrongly Used as ‘Rohingya Criminal’
Sudarshan TV, a Hindi television news channel, recently used a photo of a disabled man being dragged by a Bangladesh police officer, alleging that the man was a Rohingya criminal being dragged by cops.
Suresh Chavhanke, the Editor-in-Chief of the news channel, tweeted the link to the story, and his tweet was eventually retweeted over a hundred times.
However, the photo is actually that of an activist, and member of Gonojagoron Mancha, clicked during a protest in 2014, reported SMHoaxsalyer.
Read the full story here.
Jasleen Josen Clarifies After Fake News on NASA Selection
Has Jasleen Kaur Josan become the first Indian astronaut to join the 2030 Mars Mission? A tweet by Harsh Goenka, Chairman of RPG Enterprises, made this claim on 8 October that has subsequently gone viral with more than 1,700 retweets and 4,800 likes.
Not just Twitter, but a slew of sites also jumped on this viral news to celebrate the first ‘Indian’, first ‘Indian woman’ and first ‘Indian Sikh woman’ who will leave for Mars in 2030.
While Josan’s achievements till date are noteworthy, the news about her selection for the first Mars project in 2030 is fake.
Read full story here.
Modi’s Mother Celebrating Diwali? It’s Fake
A video of an old woman playing Garba is being shared as a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 97-year old mother Heeraben Modi celebrating Diwali at her home.
Twitter users were quick to call out the video shared by Kiran Bedi, Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, who later on tweeted that it was a case of mistaken identity.
While we were not able to find much about the identity or age of the woman in the video, the video itself has existed since September on YouTube.
Read the full story here.
(With inputs from BoomLive)
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