Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday, 27 April, The Times of India’s headline screaming that the two leaders will “mate” six times in 24 hours went viral. The photo of the newspaper headline spread like wildfire on social media platforms, especially on Twitter and WhatsApp.
The viral photo was shared by some journalists and other personalities on Twitter, with people expressing shock at the headline.
However, The Times of India did not publish the “mate” headline, it was photoshopped!
The original story, published in their print edition on 27 April carried a headline that read: “Modi, Xi will meet 6 times in 24 hours”.
While a simple zoom-in of the photo would reveal that there was a change in texture of the print, Alt News’s Pratik Sinha pointed out that the words ‘t’ and ‘e’ in the word ‘mate’ were different from ‘t’ and ‘e’ in the word ‘times’.
People who had shared the story earlier, like senior journalist Saikat Datta, and IPS D Roopa put out a clarification saying that the photo was fake.
The Times of India Too Clarifies
Soon after the photo went viral, The Times of India acknowledged that a photoshopped version of their headline was doing the rounds, and clarified that all their editions carried the right headline. “You can see the difference between the correct and fake headlines”.
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