Tricks of “fact-checkers” and how to call them out

A few years ago, a well known satirical right wing website in the US posted an article saying that CNN uses a washing machine to spin the news before broadcasting it. Snopes.com, perhaps the world’s oldest fact-checking website pounced upon it and declared it fake news. No, they explained, CNN does not have a washing…More

Times Now fake news about Umar Khalid secret addmission Umar Khalid

Umar Khalid Former JNU student leader Umar Khalid was arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act or UAPA for his alleged role in Delhi riots. After 11 hours of questioning, Delhi Police’s Special Cell charged the activist with “sedition and 18 other sections of the Indian Penal Code, including murder and attempt to murder,” reported Scroll.…More

Old video of woman counselling same faith married couple viral with ‘love jihad’ spin

Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government enacted new anti-conversion legislation last month, aimed at preventing marriages between Muslim men and Hindu woman in the garb of combating ‘love jihad’ cases. The law says that religious conversion by ‘coercion or temptation’ will be considered a non-bailable offence. On December 19, Rashid (22) was released after spending two months in prison following…More

Fake news. Mosque on old Delhi railway station.

An image of what appears to be a mosque on a railway platform has been widely circulating online. Several people have claimed that a mosque stands on the platform of the Old Delhi railway station. According to the claim, the mosque hasn’t been removed even as the Hanuman temple that stood on the road at…More

Disinformation against Indian Muslims during the COVID-19 pandemic

Some commentators naively assumed that a life-threatening pandemic would bring citizens together, and be enough to suspend if not completely stop the now endemic barrage of disinformation targeted at Indian Muslims. However, COVID-19 has simply added a new dimension to the hate speech and disinformation circulated about Muslim communities in India. LSE’s Professor Shakuntala Banaji and Dr Ram Bhat explain why hate and…More

Image of 2013 Bangladesh riots shared as violence against Hindus in West Bengal

A photograph of a rioting mob has been shared amid West Bengal elections with the claim that it depicts violence against Hindus in Hooghly. #StandWithBengalHindus is the hashtag used along with the claim. Multiple Twitter accounts have shared the image. Old image from Bangladesh A simple reverse image search takes one to a May 5, 2013 article published in Daily…More