From an image showing Home Minister Amit Shah with the claim that he hid his handcuffs under a handkerchief while being taken to the court, to an old bird attack in Texas that went viral as news from Saudi Arabia, this week saw a barrage of misinformation on social media.
Here's a quick round-up of fake forwards that misled the public this week.
1. Do Masks Help Prevent COVID-19? Here’s What Experts Have to Say
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage, there has been a constant swirl of misinformation around masks. So should you wear them, do they really help, how do you wear them, or will not wearing them give you herd immunity?
According to Dr Arvind Kumar, a leading pulmonologist, it’s necessary to wear masks at least for the next few months.
However, people have raised concerns regarding masks causing ‘Hypercapnia’ – an unhealthy increase in carbon dioxide levels in the blood. Dr Kumar says that wearing a mask while exercising can be “fatal”.
The Indian government has advised healthy people to wear homemade face masks, especially outside their homes, for better personal hygiene and for the protection of their communities during the coronavirus pandemic. However, health workers should use a triple-layer medical mask or N95 respiratory masks.
Why should one wear a mask? Because, by wearing masks, you are preventing air droplets from going far away and also preventing air droplets from entering your lungs while breathing.
Read the full story here.
2. Old Images Used to Show Massive Fire in Uttarakhand Forests
Several images are being circulated on social media claiming to show devastating visuals of Uttarakhand forest fire that broke out on Saturday, 23 May.
While the images claim to show the massive fire in the jungles of Uttarakhand, we found that a lot of these pictures are old.
A reverse image search led us to an ABP article that had published the image in April 2016 with the headline: “Forest fires rage across Uttarakhand, 6 die since February”. The image was credited to Anup Sah photography.
A search for the Facebook profile of Anup Sah showed us that the photographer had indeed uploaded the image on 28 April 2016.
The Quint, too, had published an article in 2016 in which the viral image was used.
There are many other images claiming to be of the forest fire doing the rounds on social media. However, we found that while some of them were old, some were from old incidents in places like California.
Read the full story here.
3. Home Min Amit Shah Hid Handcuffs Under Handkerchief? Look Again!
An image showing Home Minister Amit Shah with some police personnel is going viral with the claim that he hid his handcuffs under a handkerchief while being taken to the court.
On running a reverse image search, we found an article published by The Hindu in August 2010 which carried the viral image. The article was headlined “Amit Shah had active role in fake encounter: CBI”.
This was when Shah was taken to the CBI office in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar in connection with the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case. The minister was discharged in the case in December 2014 citing lack of evidence.
On searching some more, we found a clearer version of the image (seen above) in an article published in Outlook. On zooming in and looking at the image clearly, it becomes evident that Shah was not handcuffed then, but is instead holding a handkerchief in his hands.
Read the full story here.
4. Old Video Passed Off as Last Moments of Passengers on Pak Plane
A video that claims to show the ‘last moments’ of passengers on the ill-fated Pakistan Airlines plane that crashed in a residential area near Karachi on 22 May, has gone viral on social media. In the video, the passengers can be seen wailing and praying as turbulence increases.
A reverse search of the keyframes of the video took us to a Dailymotion link from December 2016, titled “Video Scenes from PIA PK 661 Crashed Flight on the way from Chitral to Islamabad”
On searching YouTube with these keywords, we came across a CNN video uploaded in May 2016 with the title: “Heavy turbulence scares passengers on Etihad flight”.
We found that the visuals in the CNN video, which shows the situation inside an Etihad Airways flight in 2016 from Abu Dhabi to Jakarta when turbulence shook the cabin, matched those of the viral video.
Therefore, the viral video is clearly of an old flight and not the PIA flight which crashed in Karachi in May 2020.
Read the full story here.
5. Old Video From Texas Shared as ‘Bird Attack in Saudi Arabia’
A video of black birds swarming a store is being shared on social media with the claim that it is from a recent incident in Saudi Arabia where “birds were not allowing customers to come out of the store.”
The video is viral on Twitter and Facebook with this claim.
A Google search using the keywords “Birds attack parking lot” helped us find a Facebook post by Daily Mail that had the same video. According to the post, the location of the video is HMart in Texas and attributed it to a website called Viral Hog.
On watching the video on Viral Hog’s YouTube channel, we were able to match frames to establish that the video is the same as the viral one.
According to the description of the video, the incident is from 6 December 2016 when black birds were seen in huge numbers in Carrollton, Texas, USA.
Therefore, it is clearly an incident from Texas, dating back to 2016, which is being shared now with a misleading claim that it is from Saudi Arabia.
Read the full story here.
(You can read all our coronavirus related fact-checked stories here.)
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