It is indeed unfortunate that well-known TV personalities and journalists have taken to spreading false news and deliberately faking videos, to spread misinformation, in a very big way, across the country and abroad. Two of my earlier posts on fake news are Fake News by our Media and More Fake Stories
Two issues were raised in the past week, both related to UP which is headed for polls next year. The first was on purchase of some land by Ramjanam Bhoomi Trust on which enough clarifications have been given. The second, which, to me is of greater concern, is the deliberate falsification of a video in the attempt to inflame passions (of Muslims and the world).
The video was posted - why sans any audio soon became clear. It showed a few youngsters, beating up an old Muslim man Sufi Abdul Samad Saifi, and cutting his beard. The subsequent narrative given by the victim, apparently in the presence of Umed Idris, a leader of the Samajwadi Party was that this was done (at gun point?) to force him to chant “Jai Shri Ram”. Turns out that Saifi used to sell tabeez and the wife of one of the buyers, who wore the tabeez, suffered an abortion. In their anger some guys (both Muslim and Hindu) thrashed the man and chopped off his beard.
And what was made of this incident – totally fabricated and totally meant to fan communal hatred? And done by muting the video so that truth would not surface!!
Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of Alt News has himself accepted that the videos he had posted is false and that he has deleted his tweets/ videos. But this tweet and this video was retweeted by many including the famous – or rather infamous - Rana Ayyub, Salman Nizami, Dr. Shama Mohammed, Maskoor Usmani, Saba Naqvi, The Wire, The New Indian Express, HT Delhi to name a few. There are several others including Rahul Gandhi who apparently also tweeted about this incident.
https://twitter.com/zoo_bear/status/1404836394371977216?s=1005
It may be recalled that Twitter had marked Sambit Patra's tweet on Congress’s toolkit – as "Manipulated Media" on the strength of a fact check by Alt News. But very obviously Alt News is a questionable source – creating their own falsities.
More details can be read here: https://www.opindia.com/2021/06/thequint-withdraws-its-cartoon-defaming-jai-shri-ram-chant-after-ghaziabad-hate-crime-turns-out-to-be-fake/
(Care: Op India is pro the current Govt).
#Altnews #FakeNews
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