The Oxford English Dictionary defines fact-check as ‘investigate in order to verify the facts’. Global Fact—the annual conference of the International Fact-Checking Network—has doubled in size every two years since its first session in London in 2014. In India, digital media evolved post-2014 Lok Sabha elections and today with another election at the door, there is a vitiating atmosphere.
Fake news has grown to gigantic proportions till the line between what is true and what is not has become blurry. This has given rise to fact-checkers, who have taken up cudgels to go past the smokescreen. For the first time, the Election Commission has asked that all candidates will have to give details of their social media accounts while filing their nomination papers for the national election. And every day post-Balakot, both Pakistan and India seem to be competing against each other in a game of ‘our fact vs your myth’.
M Dinakaran, Deputy Inspector General and chief spokesperson of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), has gone on record to say how the paramilitary force was targeted after the Pulwama terror attack. While some circulated fake news about a team of sniffer dogs dying in the blast, others shared morphed gory images of bloodied parts in a bucket, claiming that this was how the bodies of the slain jawans were being handed over to their families. Another viral image showed an injured army man in combat outfit with bandages on his body. The post claimed that the man left his treatment mid-way to teach terrorists ‘a lesson’ after hearing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given the Army a ‘free hand’ to retaliate. Later, it was proved that the photograph was of a Russian soldier and was taken during a 2004 terror attack in Russia. A dedicated team of 12 to 15 people from across the country debunked at least five posts a day starting February 14.
To counter fake news, the CRPF put out an advisory on the attacks and also asked three lakh of
their own personnel to be alert and bust fake news by sending out fact-based reports.
Before even journalism began, fake news was there. An early record dates back to ancient Rome when Antony met Cleopatra and his political enemy Octavian launched a smear campaign against him with “short, sharp slogans written upon coins in the style of archaic tweets”. The propagandist became the first Roman emperor. Now, there is an army sitting on social media to amplify fake news. It is all a vicious cycle of untruths.
It is only the fact-checkers who stand in the way. What began as a hobby for many has turned into a full-fledged profession now. From college graduates to seasoned professionals, many are turning to fact-checking—some on a full-time basis with a proper office and team dedicated to it, while others are doing it part-time, teaming up with like-minded individuals. In fact, there are training workshops, such as the recent ones conducted by Google, and also by other private bodies that teach the youth how to go about fact-checking.
Political Upheavals
Dhruv Rathee is 23 years old and a social media sensation. His YouTube video page has over 4.6 lakh subscribers and climbing. A former photography and filmmaking enthusiast, who was earlier content with posting videos about his travel, today Rathee is busy being part of the ever-growing tribe of dedicated fact-checkers, who do not shy away from taking on the powers-that-be. One of the first political videos Rathee released was ‘BJP Exposed: Lies Behind the Bullshit’—the video intercut Modi’s pre-election speeches with his government’s failures and backtracking on promises. “I made that video out of frustration,” Rathee says. The video registered over 50,000 views. Rathee turned into a social media influencer when, in a video, he debunked claims about the inefficiency of Arvind Kejriwal’s Delhi government.
Ahmedabad-based Pratik Sinha—described in his words as ‘geeky’ and the co-founder of India’s leading website on fact-checking, AltNews—started fact-checking after his over 300-km-long march on foot from Ahmedabad to Una to protest the flogging of Dalit men. He decided to launch a digital outlet to talk about people’s issues. Debunking fake news automatically became an objective. Sinha believes that if something is viral on Facebook, it’s at least five times more viral on WhatsApp and more difficult to counter. Recently, his site fact-checked a set of images doing rounds on social media supposedly depicting the impact of Indian Air Force’s airstrike in Pakistan. The photographs show mass graves and dead bodies. AltNews found the original photographs on
Getty Images, which describes the pictures as, “Pakistani Edhi charity volunteers bury the bodies of unclaimed heatwave victims at a graveyard in Karachi on June 26, 2015.”
As the 2019 Lok Sabha elections approach, it is a race to pinpoint what is the truth and what is not, and more importantly, whose truth is it. James Wilson, a civil engineer who works with the Inter-State Water Advisory Committee of Kerala, became a social media celebrity after he began to dissect the Centre’s victory cry regarding the note ban on his blog Decipher the Demonetisation. In a post on August 14 last year, Wilson questioned the government’s shifting statements on the rise in the number of new taxpayers post the currency ban.
His conclusion: “So all these hard data from the CAG, CBDT and MoF proved that there was no substantial increase in the number of new taxpayers or direct tax collection due to demonetisation.” Likewise, Truth Vs Hype, a show on NDTV, also fact-checked the government’s so-called claims of 91 lakh new taxpayers in the financial year 2016-17. Anchor Sreenivasan Jain pointed out that the figure did not tally with the government’s own Economic Survey report which said that there had been an addition of 80.7 lakh new taxpayers during FY 2016-17.
Then Power Minister Piyush Goyal got a taste of fact-checking early on in his job with the Modi government. He had tweeted: “Govt has illuminated 50,000Km of Indian roads by retrofitting 30 lakh conventional street lights with LED lights”. Unfortunately, the picture used was one which was at least eight years old. SMHoaxSlayer was the first to point it out: “Great work sir. But a small request—when it’s already done, pls use real photos. This is decades old used by many manufacturers & countries”. AltNews went a step further and reported that the picture dated from at least 2009 and was used on the CNET website as part of an article about a partnership between LED start-up Luminus and a Japanese firm.
Pankaj Jain, founder of SMHoaxSlayer.com, started his website in August 2015 and claims to have debunked more than 2,000 fake news. Jain was drawn to fact-checking when he realised how harmless pranks on WhatsApp groups were misinforming people. He says earlier most of the WhatsApp shares used to be messages such as one can get AIDS by drinking a cold drink or Diwali photo from Nasa, etc. Later it turned into sharing of videos or images that would incite communal hatred and violence etc. Jain explains how his work is cut out for him: “People send in their queries with video/images etc. Or sometimes I spot them on social media. I start with keyword searches on various platforms. If it is an image, the first thing required is reverse image search. In case of videos, reverse image search of few frames helps. Once the real information is out, I put it out on the public domain.”
Jain recently fact-checked a Getty image that was doing the rounds on social media. It showed an aerial photo of damaged and destroyed structures in Balakot. It was claimed that the pictures were of post-IAF strikes. Jain found that though the picture was from Balakot, it went back to October 15, 2005, when 90 percent of the city was levelled by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake.
Bharat Nayak, founding editor of The Logical Indian, says their intention from the beginning was to provide correct information. Around end-2015, says Nayak, they noticed that the volume of fake news was on the rise with some painful real-life consequences. This urged the team to start a dedicated fact-checking segment in 2016. “As elections approach, it is natural that circulation of fake news and propaganda will increase. Apart from verification of communal posts and other user-generated fake news, we shall be dedicatedly verifying the claims of our political leaders. The idea is that when the voter approaches the ballot, he/she shouldn’t vote on the basis of false information. We are also going across the colleges in India and conducting workshops to create awareness on how to identify fake news,” says Nayak.
The site recently debunked Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar’s claims that no Kashmiri students were harmed by mobs post-Pulwama.
In 2014, Govindraj Ethiraj, former editor-in-chief of Bloomberg TV India, started Factchecker.in. Touted as India’s first dedicated fact-checking initiative, it is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network’s code of principles. It debunked Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim that 35 airports were built over the last four years. The site revealed that only seven airports were made operational between 2014 and 2018. Later, Ethiraj launched Boom in 2016, an independent digital journalism initiative, which further brought forth BoomLive, another fact-checking initiative. BoomLive recently busted Pakistani website World News Observer’s article claiming US defence equipment manufacturer Lockheed Martin planned to file a lawsuit against India for making ‘false claims’ about downing a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet on February 27.
Milking Chaos
An emerging pattern is the appearance of fake videos or images coinciding with major political events. For example, last year with the Sabarimala debate heating up in Kerala, on almost every alternate day there was a video or image of a ‘devotee’ heckled by ‘secular forces’, or stories about women carrying soiled sanitary napkins into the temple, or images of murdering an Opposition party member by the ruling party’s cadre—which was later proved to be a video from Mexico. Even ministers and government officials resort to spreading fake news or fall victim to it. In May 2018, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor shared a news article on former RBI chief Raghuram Rajan being appointed head of Bank of England. Tharoor later tweeted, saying that he might have been “taken in by fake news”. Minister of Railways and Coal, Piyush Goyal, also fell for a fake video of the Vande Bharat Express and ended up tweeting—‘It’s a bird…It’s a plane’—only to be massively trolled for the time-lapse video.
Senior journalist and digital strategist K Yatish Rajawat, who has worked extensively on fake news, says, “Fake news has always existed. Now, the capacity for it to spread has gone up exponentially due to social media platforms. It is generally created to evoke an emotion hence its capacity to be shared and to go viral is much more than any other boring information. People share information that has an element to shock.”
Academic Turmoil
At a time when fakery seems to be the norm—from Amazon and Swiggy reviews to political allegations and news reports—one would think that education is maybe one sector that still propagates truth. Well, think again. Last year, a dozen media organisations, including The New Yorker, Le Monde and a major Indian media house, dug deeper as part of an investigation facilitated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on fake journals.
The study found that India, with 903 universities, 39,050 colleges and 10,011 stand-alone institutions, is “one of the biggest global hubs” for predatory publishing. From plush offices in the heart of bustling metros, to a one-laptop office in some nondescript town in the hinterlands, these publications have a strong online presence with minimum or zero editorial checks.
In 2010, the University Grants Commission introduced the Academic Performance Indicators in which it made research compulsory for teachers for career advancement. For would-be scholars, who do not have the means and intellect to do the same, the simple solution is to pay a certain fee to be included in a fake journal. The charges range from as little as `2,000 to a steep `1.6 lakh per paper.
Clamping Down
From people getting lynched, to mobs going on a rampage, to targeting the socially weaker sections—it is a monster waiting to rise from its sleep. Little wonder that ahead of the general elections in India, social media giant Facebook got a new team as part of its third-party fact-checking programme. The company has joined hands with the India Today Group, Vishvas.news, Factly, Newsmobile and Fact Crescendo for this initiative. If a fact-checking partner rates a story as fake, the social media company will reduce the distribution of the post by 80 percent. Facebook, which has close to 300 million users in India, has been getting flak from across the globe due to misuse of user data. In fact, the social media major was criticised by the Indian government for its role in up to 30 mob lynchings. WhatsApp is deleting two million accounts per month globally to curb spread of misinformation. It has limited the number of people to whom a message could be forwarded to five.
Also, lax laws relating to digital platforms are a bane. For example, ownership is never checked. Even a Chinese entrepreneur can invest money in a website in India to propagate the kind of news he/she wants. A recent BBC research—Beyond Fake News—has revealed that the rising tide of nationalism in India is behind the spread of fake news. The research commissioned by the BBC World Service is a part of the larger campaign and series by the BBC on disinformation and fake news. About 16,000 Twitter accounts and 3,000 Facebook pages were analysed. “Poor standards of global media literacy and the ease with which malicious content can spread unchecked on digital platforms mean there’s never been a greater need for trustworthy news providers to take proactive steps,” Jamie Angus, Director of the BBC World Service Group, said in a statement.
Roadblocks
A big hurdle to effective fact-checking is the language. Most of the content is produced in English—a language only spoken by about 10 percent of India’s population. But websites are quickly realising it and setting up dedicated Hindi pages which is helping to extend their fact-checking news to more than 60 percent of the population. Google News Lab recently conducted a five-day training session with journalists from across India on the importance of fact-checking. There are plans to get 200 trainers in seven Indian languages besides English and Hindi on board. They will further train 8,000 journalists by end-2019, says Irene Jay Liu, Google’s News Lab lead for Asia-Pacific. Over the past two years the company has already trained more than 6,000 journalists in English and Hindi.
There was a time, fake news or rather rumours went viral by word of mouth, but now thanks to social media, spreading such news is just a click or swipe away. Time is clearly running out, and people and the government need to be made accountable and rules should be put in place to counter it while there is still a chance.