We copy the below top-fake-news-lists from opindia.com, a news analysis site - just in case that website goes away in the future.
General notable fakes
- Breast tax in kerala. OP18
2019
The report resorts to a classic propaganda method. It tries to add useless information in order to obfuscate from what the headline claims, that is, mental health deteriorating after the abrogation of Article 370. While the article includes a host of useless information that has nothing to do with the subject, it then uses conjecture and speculation to tie it all together and somehow, assert that Kashmiris are facing mental health issues after the abrogation of Article 370.
The Wire headline clearly asserts that there is a mental healthcare crisis in the state owing to the decision of the central government, however, at the very outset of the article, The Wire simply admits that it is a mere prediction by doctors, who have not been named in the entire article. They then proceed to spin a yarn that would leave the readers dizzy. The Wire talks about a 2015 survey that they use as an indication of the mental health issues prevalent in Kashmir.
- article continues after ad - (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); - article resumes -
The Wire article uses the statement of an anon physician to make a conclusion that the data does not support. Firstly, The Wire article proclaims that the number of health issue cases have gone up since the abrogation of Article 370. Then, they quote a physician to say that the actual effect of the move on mental health will be visible only a few years from now. Then, they use the lie about Kashmiris having no access to healthcare to insinuate that while mental health issues have increased, the cases in August are low because of no access to healthcare, however, since the cases were even lower in May and the highest in June, the data is inconclusive.
Most people had imagined that the Media industry had already fallen as far as they possibly could deep into the abyss of irresponsibility, paid news, propaganda and just blatant lies. However, Shekhar Gupta, the chief of Editors Guild and his ‘news’ portal The Print come as a stench of the rotting soul when they manage to stoop further at every given opportunity. Shekhar Gupta and The Print managed to blame the Yediyurappa government that was recently sworn in Karnataka for a scandal that had broken during the tenure of JDS’ Kumaraswamy and names Congress leaders like Ahmed Patel.
While Tweeting a line from the transcript that said ‘Ahmed Patel said I will make him commissioner, Revanna will support’, Shekhar Gupta, the head of The Print and chief of Editors Guild, went on to peddle lies and allege that this was the first scandal that had hit the newly sworn-in Yediyurappa government. The line tweeted by Shekhar Gupta himself mentions senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel who is close to Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and Revanna, who is the brother of former Karnataka Chief Minister from JDS, HD Kumaraswamy. The Print story itself started off by spreading lies and telling its readers that this scandal has turned the heat up on the BJP government in Karnataka.
In a horrific incident, girls of the rainbow dance group were invited to perform for an event celebrating Eid and were then heckled by a mob and forced to strip naked and dance. One vehicle of the dance group was also attacked by axes and steel digger bars, causing substantial damage to the vehicle.
The Rainbow dance group’s director Arup D Rabha filed an FIR with Boko police station regarding the incident, where he has named Kuddus Ali, Sayed Khan, Atikul Islam, Samajuddin, Jeherul Islam and Abbas Ali, along with all the members of the organising committee of the event as the accused in the case. Shahrukh Khan and Subahan Khan were arrested as well.
The reportage surrounding this horrific incident was nothing short of shameful, to say the least. The Media has conveniently glossed over the fact that the horrific incident actually took place during an Eid celebration, staying true to their tradition of underreporting crimes related to the minority community.
Website NewsClick.com had published a malicious report peddling the ‘EVM hacked’ theory. The report alleged that thousands of phantom votes are suspected in several Lok Sabha constituencies in Bihar, UP, Delhi and MP. The website, which is a promoter of dubious Hate Crime Watch in association with FactChecker.in, says they analysed eight constituencies, where they found that excess votes recorded in these seats are more than the winning margin. OpIndia had fact-checked the NewsClick report to show how these conclusions were drawn based on fake data using provisional data on the ECI website as the final voter turnout numbers. Later, the ECI issued a detailed clarification as well.
Times of India, one of the leading publications of the country, which often indulges in propagating fake news, was yet again caught peddling half-truths regarding the suspension of 22-year old Meerut Law Student.
In a report, Times of India journalist Piyush Rai resorted to false propaganda to target the BJP by reporting that the 22-year old Meerut Law College student was suspended after she refused to wear a BJP cap. He further claimed that the “inebriated” students who had allegedly molested Umam Khanam for ‘refusing to put on a BJP cap’ were also rusticated.
However, ground reports by Swati Goel Sharma of Swarajya and conversations OpIndia had with Khanam’s classmates proved conclusively that the entire thing was a giant hoax. In due course, the series of events as they panned out exposed the lies spread by TOI as well.
On 31st January, ThePrint ran a report by one D. K. Singh who claimed that Angus Deaton, a British economist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015 along with French economist Thomas Piketty were advising the Congress on its minimum income guarantee program.
ThePrint states that according to party leaders, the party reached out to the two economists since Rahul Gandhi had “studied their work”. However, when OpIndia reached out to Deaton, he denied being associated with Congress or Rahul Gandhi. In a one-line email, Deaton said that he has had no contact with Congress on this or anything else.
The French economist Thomas Piketty, however, did confirm “exchanging with Congress about how much it would cost and how to implement this”. He added that “it is high time to move from the politics of caste conflict to the politics of income and wealth redistribution.” Thus, Shekhar Gupta’s ThePrint ran a story without confirming or verifying independently with the Nobel laureate and based it on what Congress leaders fed the journalist.
On January 24, 2019, The Print published a rather alarming report saying that India doesn’t have polio vaccine for the next round of immunization. The report said that the country is facing acute shortage of polio vaccines, and due to that reason, the Modi government has indefinitely postponed the next polio immunization on February 3. According to The Print, there was a shortage of both types of vaccines, OPV and IPV (Oral Poliovirus Vaccine and Inactivated Poliovirus Vaccine, which is given by injection).
The report published by The Print was fake, the government clarified that there was no shortage of polio vaccine in the country, and the immunisation programme had not been postponed indefinitely. They later updated their article with the clarification from the ministry, but the fake claims that they made in the report were still there.
- 8. ‘Journalist’ Abhisar Sharma spreads fake news by morphing images to target other journalist, deletes after getting caught
In his show on HW Network, a platform used by molestation accused Vinod Dua to propagate fake news as well, Abhisar Sharma edited images of the content of a show to target Aaj Tak journalist Chitra Tripathi. He posted a propaganda video to question the silence of some of the journalists after another controversial journalist and hero of Indian ‘liberal-secular’ media – Ravish Kumar won the Ramon Magsaysay award.
Questioning their integrity, Abhisar Sharma put out an image of a show hosted by Chitra Tripathi in which it can be seen that the title card of the show has been carefully edited out by Abhisar Sharma to convey that the anchor credited Prime Minister Modi for the success of Chandrayaan-2 mission. However, in reality, there was no reference to PM Modi in the show.
Chitra Tripathi’s show on Aaj Tak had a title “Ab Chaand Hamara Mutti Mein (Now, the moon is within our reach)”. But, Abhisar Sharma, who has an inherent hatred towards Prime Minister edited out the title part to “Ab Chaand Modi ki Mutti Mein (Now, the moon is within Modi’s reach) to target Chitra Tripathi.
Well, Shekhar Gupta did not say ‘we need to own up to failures’. Certainly not in the context of Shivam Vij, contributing editor of Shekhar Gupta led The Print who concocted quotes and then brazened it out. Shekhar Gupta actually said this in 2007 when he was with the Indian Express. But since The Print believes in attributing decade-old quotes to current scenarios, we thought it would be a fun exercise to see how time changes context.
Shivam Vij, the contributing editor of The Print, has been accused of inventing a quote out of thin air for his report titled ‘Why Kashmiri Pandits may never return to the Valley’. Shivam Vij used a conversation he claims to have had with author Arvind Gigoo in order to peddle his agenda. The son of the Kashmiri Pandit “quoted”, Siddhartha Gigoo, came out on Twitter and accused Shivam Vij of lying, saying that his father never gave such a quote and has never spoken to The Print.
Shivam Vij claimed that the quote is accurate and was taken in 2010-2012. That is almost a decade ago when terrorism in Kashmir was at its peak. When Gigoo confronts Vij, shamelessly and brazenly, Vij asks Gigoo if ‘he has gone crazy’. The Print and Shivam Vij seem to be of the opinion that a decade-old opinion when the times and situations were different can simply be quoted out of context to suit their current propaganda. After this shameless display of arrogance by The Print and Shivam Vij, the publication led by Shekhar Gupta sneakily changed the paragraph where Arvind Gigoo was quoted.
One of the pet propaganda theory which emanated long back from Pakistan is that India has 700,000 troops deployed in Kashmir valley with the express purpose of holding down the people of Kashmir. As Ajai Shukla notes in a piece on this very subject: “Pakistani propaganda and Kashmiri human rights organisations, such as the influential J&K Coalition of Civil Society, repeatedly state that India controls Kashmir by deploying 700,000 security-men across the state. It is often alleged that half the Indian Army is based in J&K”.
However, the situation has now further evolved. The latest number of Indian security personnel in Jammu & Kashmir is 1 million! Yes, that’s 1,000,000 troops deployed in Jammu & Kashmir with the express purpose to hold the local population, according to media that doesn’t much care about facts. Some others have a more nuanced approach; they claim that 500,000 or half a million troops are deployed in Kashmir (as against Jammu & Kashmir) to hold the province and ‘subjugate’ the local population.
However, the actual numbers are very different. Read our story.
2018
As 2018 comes to an end, we bring you the yearly roundup of a subject close to our hearts at OpIndia: media lies. This year as well the mainstream media continued to peddle lies and fake narratives even as celebrity journalists showed how their IQ is lower than Delhi’s winter temperature. Topping the list is NDTV (no surprises!).
1. NDTV changed its headline after their dishonesty was caught on Twitter
On 20th November, NDTV had claimed that a BJP leader, Gyan Dev Ahuja was caught distributing money at a rally and was charged with violating the poll code. However, Ahuja had already quit being a BJP member after he was denied a ticket in the Rajasthan Assembly elections. Once the flaw was pointed out, NDTV changed the headline to describe Ahuja as ‘Ex-BJP lawmaker’. But then, almost as if NDTV was acting as Nostradamus, Ahuja ‘rejoined’ BJP three days later on 23rd November. He was also appointed state’s vice president for the BJP. You just can’t make such stuff up.
2. The truth about the origins of Children’s Day
We have grown up believing that Children’s Day is celebrated on 14th November on Jawaharlal Nehru’s birthday as a tribute to him. The popular narrative being he loved children and hence a day to honour him. Except, the real story is far from what media wants us to believe. “Baal Divas” is inspired by “Flag Day”, Queen Elizabeth II’s (surprise, surprise!) birthday on 19th June. The day is observed to raise money for the Save The Child Fund. And that is how we have one more British legacy being celebrated in name of Nehru-Gandhi family.
3. Times Group had to delete a report and apologise to Subramanian Swamy for circulating a misleading quote on Rafale
In July this year, BJP leader and legal activist Subramanian Swamy threatened to initiate legal proceedings against Times Of India after the publication’s digital portal IndiaTimes misquoted his statement on Rafale. In reality, they had used Swamy’s 2015 quote in a 2018 story, without verifying, which left Swamy furious. IndiaTimes later issued an apology and pulled down the story.
4. Molestation accused Vinod Dua maliciously edited a video clip of Nitin Gadkari
Left-wing propagandist Vinod Dua, who is now gainfully employed again at a seemingly obscure media platform ‘HW News’, published an ‘exclusive’ interview with Union Minister Nitin Gadkari. Except, it was maliciously edited to show Gadkari was being critical of the Modi government. On watching the full clip it was clear that the government Gadkari was actually critical of was the former Congress-led UPA government.
5. BBC’s shoddy report on ‘fake news’ which reeked of dishonesty and lack of ethics
BBC’s “Beyond Fake News” report which made the outlandish claim that ‘nationalism’ was driving the spread of fake news. The report was based on dubious data, incorrect interpretations and biased sample. It was almost as if BBC decided the conclusion of their research and then reverse worked their data to suit their conclusion. After being called out for their shoddy journalism, BBC deleted the ‘research’ it had conducted on ‘fake news’, amended the same, uploaded and then deleted again. Amusingly, the fact-checking websites used in the BBC research have themselves either spread fake news or are known for dubious data analysis themselves.
6. The Wire journalist shared communally sensitive fake news, retracted after being corrected
The Wire journalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani tweeted fake news that BJP MP Babul Supriyo had threatened to skin Muslims alive. She retracted her statement partially but later continued to defend her fake news. While Mahesh Hegde of Postcard news had been arrested for posting a tweet with fake news that had communally sensitive content, no such action was taken against Sherwani.
7. Did Modi spend Rs 35 lakh for Yoga Day video shoot?
Short answer, no. Long answer, journalists, politicians, celebrity lawyers shared a link of a soft-porn website which made the above claim, only because it suits their agenda. Months later, they shared a link from the same website which made outlandish claims. Both the times, the news were fake.
8. Pro-Congress troll spreads fake news on his pro-Islamist propaganda website
Abhishek Mishra, a pro-Congress troll, runs fake news and pro-Islamist website and multiple Facebook pages. The pro-Islamist and fake news website has news such as a hen giving birth to puppies instead of laying eggs. He was caught spreading fake news regarding a BJP leader in Rajasthan, during the run-up to Rajasthan Assembly Elections which was actually an old, unrelated clip from 2016.
9. The Wire spun another web of lies, this time to target Piyush Goyal
The leftist propaganda website ‘The Wire’ and its “ace journalist” Rohini Singh have developed a penchant for peddling baseless stories and branding it “investigative journalism”. Their modus operandi is simple. They take unrelated facts, throw in some well-worded insinuations and quote incomplete reports to make the reader believe they have stumbled upon proverbial gold when what they have is worse than ash.
10. Barkha Dutt used the death of a journalist to lie and spread propaganda in an international publication
The unfortunate assassination of Kashmiri journalist Shujaat Bukhari was used by Barkha Dutt to spread propaganda blaming “Twitter fundamentalists” for Bukhari’s death. And as if that wasn’t enough, she went a step ahead and used his death to write a shoddy, lie ridden article in Washington Post, basically using his death to further her own agenda.
And with that, we conclude the top ten lies media spread in 2018. We hope you enjoyed reading our articles as much as we enjoyed writing them. Do keep reading and sharing and supporting us as we enter 2019 and brace ourselves with more media lies to bust.
2017
Year 2017 has been like every other year for Indian media. Imaginary reports, blatant lies, gross malicious misreporting have been the hallmark of the year, yet again. What was perhaps different this year, was the supposed alternate media too joined the main stream media in spreading malicious propaganda laced with lies. We bring to you, the Top 10 media lies of 2017:
1. The Jay Amit Shah story : Low on facts, high on innuendo
The leftist propaganda website ‘The Wire’ published a shoddy hit job against Amit Shah’s son, Jay Shah. The story was so shabby, that it took our team merely a few hours to counter this story and completely shatter the narrative that The Wire wanted to create. In fact, after our story was published, The Wire selectively altered its story multiple times to make it remotely believable and credible. This expose of ours became the most read story in our Media lies section.
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2. How journalists and politicians united to spread a lie about the new UP CM
Yogi Adityanath being announced as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh was unsurprisingly a major jolt for the secular liberal coterie which includes certain ‘journalists’ and politicians. As soon as this decision was made public, the coterie got busy is spreading lies about Yogi. One of those lies was how the Yogi Adityanath said that the dead body of muslim women should be raped. We had countered this lie, making it one of our top two exposes.
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3. NDTV and Nidhi Razdan conduct and entire debate based on fake news
Nidhi Razdan, the poor man’s Barkha Dutt is known for pushing fake news from a news channel, which is notorious for the same reasons. Her visceral hate for Narendra Modi is no secret. And to further that hate, sometimes, as an operational hazard, she resorts to lies. This time, Nidhi ran an entire debate based on absolute fake news. The topic of the debate was : _“Eat what you order : Modi government to fix portions of food served in restaurants”. _It didn’t take us very long to realise this was a blatant lie.
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4. Scroll spreads lies about Kabab shop closing down due to UP Govt’s ‘crackdown on meat’
When Yogi Adityanath decided to shut down illegal slaughterhouses, many people went batshit crazy. In that frenzy, Scroll, a leftist propaganda website, decided to publish a news article titled “Lucknow’s legendary Tunday Kababi downs its shutters as meat crackdown intensifies”. The article was incorrect on multiple levels. Firstly, there was no meat crackdown, and secondly, Tunday Kababi was only shut for one hour due to shortage of raw material. There was certainly no national emergency as it was made to sound. This article became one of our top exposes of 2017.
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**5. MP EVM controversy mostly a result of low IQ journalists and vile politicians **
Democracy has died a million deaths ever since the BJP has gone on an electoral winning streak. Low IQ journalists and politicians have been repeatedly casting aspersions on how reliable EVMs are despite repeated clarifications from the Election Commission. One such lie was spread during the Madhya Pradesh polls and it didn’t take us much time to puncture holes in the story considering it was a shoddily crafted fairytale by low IQ journalists and vile politicians.
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6. Media and politicians spread sensational lies about renewed Chinese aggression in Dolam
In June 2017 India and China were engaged in a stand off or sorts in the Dolam area. India displayed immense patience and a steely spine during the entire stand off. It finally for resolved after India and China both decided to withdraw troops. Of course, a diplomatic victory of India against China, with all the Chinese propaganda going around, was unpalatable to some usual suspects. By October, Indian Express’ Sushant Singh started spreading unsubstantiated lies about renewed Chinese aggression in that area. He was joined in by politicians in spreading this lie. @UnSubtleDesi busted these lies in a few hours.
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7. How lies were used to claim that PM Modi lied about GDP projections
At a function of Insitute of Company Secretaries of India, in October 2017, Prime Minister Modi said that RBI had predicted a 7.7% growth for India in the coming quarters. Journalists and Politicians got together to claim that the Prime Minister lied about these projections. We busted those lies making this article one of our top exposes of 2017.
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8. FactCheck : Can Banks gobble up your deposits as per the new proposed ‘bail-in’ Bill
Another lie that was spread far and wide by the media was that per the new ‘Bail In’ Bill, the banks would gobble up all the money that the common man has saved in bank accounts. This lie was aptly and comprehensively decimated by Ashutosh Muglikar.
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9. After OpIndia report, DNA updates misleading story on Dr Kafeel Khan
We had reported extensively about Dr. Kafeel Khan’s involvement in the Gorakhpur tragedy where many children died. We did so despite the Media cacophony exonerating Dr. Khan without even a thorough investigation or a hard look at the facts. Soon, DNA came out with a misleading report that insinuated that Dr. Kafeel Khan has been exonerated and he is “not a villain”. We busted the lies soon, as only a couple of charges had been dropped against him, while other remained. After our expose, DNA altered its headline.
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10. Tragedy scavenging by The Hindu after the Eliphinstone stampede
There was a tragic stampede at the Elphinstone station at Mumbai where many died and some were injured. But media persons, who indulge in tragedy tourism for the sake of TRPs, looked for something to milk in this also. Soon, The Hindu published a report that while a woman lay dying in the stampede, a man tried to molest her. The video that was plugged, was very clearly edited. Social Media soon questioned the veracity of these claims and Nirwa Mehta questioned The Hindu’s assertion.
2016
Year 2016 has been like every other year for Indian media. Imaginary reports, blatant lies, gross malicious misreporting have been the hallmark of the year, yet again. We bring to you, the Top 10 media lies of 2016:
1. Deaths due to Demonetisation
A major lie which was propagated by the media regarding demonetisation was the “deaths due to demonetisation” narrative. Last year we had the “Churches under attack” narrative and this year this.
In this piece, economist and columnist Rupa Subramanya took apart this propaganda, by sifting through the evidence. Subramanya showed us that, in most of the cases, someone died, shortly after demonetisation but there was no credible causal link between the two events. Also many of these stories had only a single source suggesting perhaps the version of the stories presented didn’t seem entirely credible even to other news organisations. In some cases even the family members of the deceased refused to blame demonetisation. Propaganda at its very best.
Arguably one of the biggest controversies of the year, was seen on the campus of JNU. First, we had News X and India News airing a doctored video of Kanhaiya Kumar, claiming it to be seditious. What Kanhaiya actually said was “Azadi” from social evils such as casteism etc. But the above 2 media houses showed this video by cutting the social evils part and showing Kanhaiya shouting only Azadi. Times Now too, in a way, did telecast the video, when Arnab egged Sambit Patra to show the video from his tablet, during a newshour debate.
The second lie was that some students at JNU were shouting slogans of Pakistan Zindabad at JNU. This video was later used by the likes of Kejriwal to claim ABVP was behind such slogans. What was actually a group of students, presumably from ABVP, shouting “Bhartiya Court Zindabad”, was shown by Zee News as if they were saying “Pakistan Zindabad”.
The police report abut JNU did not mention “Pakistan Zindabad” as a slogan but had many other slogans such as “Bharat ki barbaadi”, “Bharat tere Tukde honge” etc. The Delhi District Magistrate, in his report, also stated that the slogan can neither be “clearly heard” in the video, “nor in the transcripts of the JNU videos shot by the security staff”. This he says, showed that even the cops had doubts about this slogan. Even the ABVP students we spoke to confirmed that the slogans were “Bharatiya Court Zindabad” i.e. long live Indian Courts as a counter to the claims of “judicial killing” of Afzal Guru.
Some media houses then went on to suggest that ABVP shouted “Pakistan Zindabad” slogans, which was as big a lie as saying other JNU students shouted that slogan. Arvind Kejriwal was among the persons who spread this lie later picked up by media.
3. Murthal gang-rapes during Jat agitation
In February this year, Haryana saw violent protests by the Jat community, who were demanding reservations. Apart from arson and loot , there were claims that the protesters had raped some women who were travelling in private vehicles at Murthal in Haryana on the Delhi-Ambala national highway on the night of 22nd February.
A media report published in The Tribune, quoted the owner of a dhaba saying that a victim had come to his dhaba in naked condition. However, when ABP News asked him about the same, he denied being a witness to any such incident. Another eyewitness, a truck driver, also claimed that he had seen nothing and was in fact asked by the media persons to claim otherwise.
A more explosive report, filed by a reporter named Tarique Anwar, was published by Firstpost.com, which claimed to have an account of a rape victim. It quoted the victim, her husband, her mother, and even police officers. It was only in December, that it was proved that this entire report was fabricated. Firstpost had taken down the post with an apology and the reporter had been fired. The Punjab and Haryana High Court was suggested by its Amicus Curiae to prosecute the journalist and reports claimed he had admitted to his crime of fabricating evidence in the court.
4. BJP MLA breaks Uttarakhand horse’s leg
In March this year, all of India media was united in saying BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi was “caught on camera”, “mercilessly” beating a horse and breaking the horse’s leg in a “beastly attack. The video based on which all media reports were framed showed the BJP MLA swinging a lathi in front of the horse. The sound suggested that the lathi was hitting the ground, and not the horse, which could have been done to scare away the horse. The stick was being wielded in-front of the horse while the horse’s hind leg was injured. How?
From the video footage one could clearly see that one of the protesters pulled something off a policeman riding the horse and in the commotion, the horse which was back-tracking tripped over what seems to be a step, fell, and hit a protruding metal rod. The horse’s leg was never hit by anyone but it got hurt when it hit the metal rod. Much after the initial outrage, some media houses began slyly admitting that the horse’s legs buckled and got stuck in a railing, which caused the injury, and not the BJP MLA’s stick.
5. Gau Rakshaks target Mumbai man Barun Kashyap for carrying leather bag
Barun Kashyap, made headlines this year when he claimed that he was abused and threatened by some gau-rakshaks (cow protectors) after they mistook his bag as made of cow leather. He wrote about his experience in a Facebook post, which was made popular on social media by self-declared liberal activists and some Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders who vouched for the 24-year-old executive being the “gentlest, most soft spoken kid”. His version of the story was reported by the mainstream media as gospel truth, and there was the usual commentary about how there was “rising intolerance” in India and how “right wing” elements were making India a “Hindu Taliban”.
However, on social media, people challenged Barun’s narrative and asked him to provide details and pictures to prove his claims. But instead of providing those details, Barun deleted the Facebook post itself. Almost 2 months later, after police investigated the case, it turned out that the culprits were not some gau-rakshaks but Barun Kashyap himself, who allegedly made up this entire story to create some news and gain some popularity. Police informed that the CCTV footage of the area and Barun’s mobile locations didn’t match the story claimed by the “creative” director. Even the vehicle registration number provided by Barun and the sketch of the auto-driver didn’t match any real auto or person after talking to about 180 auto drivers in that region. It was also noticed that Kashyap’s statements had significantly changed from his original claims.
6. Defence Minister Parrikar said “our” teams were working on the Boycott Snapdeal movement
This lie never dies, as we showed just last week how NDTV’s anchor Nidhi Razdan repeated this lie on her show. The entire issue is based on translating Manohar Parrikar’s speech, made in Marathi, at a defence event. Some in the media reported the translation as Parrikar saying that “our” team was working on the Boycott Snapdeal movement, after Aamir Khan’s controversial remark.
This one innocuous word “our” was then taken to construe that the BJP and the Government had its own team to boycott Snapdeal. We had analysed the video and put out a full translation, which revealed that at no stage did Parrikar use the word “our” for the team. He only claimed that he was aware of such a team working on it. The change in one word helped many liars to turn the narrative around.
7. Dalit boys thrashed by upper caste in Bassi, Chittorgarh
It all started with this Times of India story, titled: “3 Dalit teens stripped, beaten for stealing bike in Chittor”. According to the report, the boys stole a bike of an Upper caste man, and later a mob thrashed them. Nowhere did it cast any aspersions as to the constituents of the mob, but, a Times of India journalist, tweeted that the boys were “stripped & thrashed by upper caste”. This tweet was the used by many, including Barkha Dutt, who had earlier been caught spreading hysteria during the Christians under attack routine. Zee News also made a report on this, followed by AAP leaning blog, Janata Ka Reporter.
But even as this narrative was being peddled, other reporters and media houses reported that the arrested suspects belong to Meena (ST) and Dhakad (OBC) communities. The police also said that the robbers belonged to the nomadic tribe Kanjar & that they had been involved in criminal activities in the past and were charge-sheeted in two cases of theft. The police also said it was not a “caste crime”, since most of the 13 accused belong to either SC or ST categories.
8. New 2000 rupees note has a nano chip
Demonetisation saw a record number of rumours fly in media and social media, claiming all sorts of things. One of the biggest rumour was in fact spread by the media itself, including channels like Zee News and Aaj Tak. Both these channels claimed that the new Rs 2000 notes were fitted with some sort of nano GPS chips which made it easy for satellites to locate them. Of course, there is no chip.
9. Leonardo Di Caprio to attend RSS event to support beef ban
This has to be the most imaginative media lie of the year. Abusive “journalist” Swati Chaturvedi penned this masterpiece of fiction this year when she claimed that she had “exclusive” information that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was to host a grand event in London, with guests such as Leonardo Di Caprio, Sir David Attenborough and Richard Branson, while trying to push the message of a beef ban. She further went on to claim that she was told that “DiCaprio and Branson’s messages have already been received and are on song”.
Of course RSS denied this report from the very beginning categorically stating that “No Bollywood or Hollywood stars have been invited for the Mahashibir”. The event went on as scheduled and many media houses covered it. But not a single reported the presence of any of the above celebrities. There was no mention even of the messages received in advance, as claimed by Chaturvedi. Neither did the Chaturvedi blow her own trumpet claiming that her “exclusive” was eventually found to be true. Either the stars were wearing invisibility cloaks, or the original “exclusive” was completely baseless. Quite clearly, the report sprung from a fertile imagination.
10. Despite Gadkari’s Tall Claims, Road Construction Is Way Behind Target
This is a classic case of how to twists facts to suit a narrative. Bloomberg Quint, which claims to be a business magazine, made elementary “mistakes” in this piece. In this post, the journalists sourced their “data” from the NHAI page and included ONLY NHAI built roads in their article. The reality is that the Ministry headed by Mr Gadkari has 3 core divisions under it:
- The NHAI
- The National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL)
- The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH).
All three combined fund and build highways in India. But the article took data from only one source and thus “proved” that the actual road construction speed was merely 15-16% of the target, when in fact, the performance on this aspect could very well be the best we have seen since independence. A detailed report explained this here.
BONUS:
Another major lie parroted this year was that the new Rafale deal was a big loss for India. These arguments was based on some half-cooked data, and weird analogies. We took them apart here.
For a complete list, visit this link.