Special Articles

Instances When Self-Proclaimed ‘Fact-Checkers’ Of Alt News Peddled Fake News

October 17, 2022
The Commune

The self-proclaimed “fact-checking” online news site, Alt News, drew attention lately for news that took Indians by surprise. Its co-founders Prateek Sinha and Mohammed Zubair were supposedly being proposed to an unconfirmed list of 2022 Nobel Peace prize nominees.

But Alt News and its co-founders are known for peddling notorious propaganda and fake news.

Here are a few examples when Alt-News and its co-founders peddled inaccurate, fake, and deliberately provocative content over the years.

Number 1

In light of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, BJP Tamil Nadu IT & Social Media Wing President had wrote in Tamil “Pity those 10 people who are going on the yatra along with Pappu (referring to Rahul Gandhi) who is playing with children applying henna.

However, Zubair added his own meaning to the tweet peddling that the BJP Tamil Nadu SM Wing Head was sharing an old image of Rahul Gandhi with a claim that he was flirting with young children.

Number 2

In June 2021,  Zubair had peddled fake news that an elderly Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh was attacked and his beard forcibly cut for not chanting ‘Vande Mataram’ and ‘Jai Shri Ram’. However, this was found to be fake news as the Ghaziabad Police clarified that there was no communal angle to the incident. He put out a clarification later.

Number 3

In February 2021, Zubair published a tweet claiming that a Hindu priest had collected ₹20 lakhs in the name of donations for Gau Sewa and ran away with the money. The image that he posted with the tweet was an old one. The idea behind posting the image, was to mislead people by proving its association with the ongoing nationwide fundraiser campaign for the construction of Bhavya Shri Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.

 

Number 4

In December 2020, he peddled fake news that a woman detained under the new anti-conversion law in Uttar Pradesh suffered miscarriage. The Moradabad district administration had called reports of miscarriage as fake news. A report by The Hindu quoting district probation officer Rajesh Chandra Gupta noted that the woman was in full normal health and that her pregnancy was intact.

After getting called out for the fake news peddled, Mohammad Zubair put out a tweet clarifying it as an ‘update’.

Number 5

In November 2020, Zubair had shared a clip of a person counting the flaws of the Modi government who claimed himself to be a fan of PM Modi. However, upon investigating, it was found that the man was a candidate for the Communist Party of India.

Number 6

When foundations of the Ram Janmabhoomi were laid in August 2020, Alt News had published an article, in which it had tried to debunk an image of Lord Ram being displayed on Times Square billboards as false.

AltNews became a laughing stock when images of Lord Ram and the Ram Mandir beamed on the billboards of Times Square.

Number 7

In October 2020, Zubair published a tweet suggesting that a group of people were planning to attack one of Tanishq’s showrooms while chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. It was clearly aimed at misleading people around an ongoing controversy because of the Tanishq ad. Upon investigation, it was found that there were no threats of attacking the showroom, and the protest was peaceful.

Number 8

In February 2020, when Islamists pelted stones at the Police in the Jamia Islamia library, AltNews claimed the students did not have stones, but only wallets in their hands. Zubair posted his claim on social media, but when the reality was exposed, he stopped replying to people.

Number 9

In April 2020, during the lockdown, he shared a photograph of two Jain monks with people around them with folded hands. He tried to imply that they were violating the lockdown. However, in reality, the two monks were distributing food packets to people and feeding animals. Zubair had edited the photo from the event, where food packets were visible.

Number 10

In June 2020, AltNews and other media houses tried to project that a man was gunned down in Amroha while trying to enter a temple on account of his caste. However, Amroha Police later clarified that there was no reference to the caste of the youth in the matter. There was an ongoing enmity over money between the two groups that led to a clash and the unfortunate death of the youth.

Number 11

Zubair once tweeted that while Mexico runs educational channels on television, Doordarshan was busy telecasting PM Modi’s “Mann Ki Baat” programs. Interestingly, it looked like Zubair never checked Doordarshan channels before posting the tweet. Doordarshan had noted that many channels and educational programs were being aired during Covid for students. He deleted the tweet after getting exposed.

Number 12

In April 2020, he shared a report from Solapur suggesting that a fire had broken out in the city. The video from February was shared in April and the tweet he had retweeted was already two months old.

Number 13

In August 2020, He had claimed that the comments opportunity on PM Modi’s Mann Ki Baat program, was switched off, due to fear of protests by students around the NEET-JEE exams . However, in reality, the comments on all the videos on PMO India’s channel, had been off for years. The Comments section was on videos on the YouTube channel of Narendra Modi and BJP that had the same video.

Number 14

In August 2020, during Covid, when reports of Mahant Gopaldas being Covid-positive were shared , Zubair posted an edited photograph suggesting RSS Chief, Mohan Bhagwat was sitting next to him. His claims were later debunked.

Number 15

In August 2020, when Bhoomi Pujan for Bhavya Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was announced, , it was reported that a digital billboard in New York city’s Times Square in the USA, would play an ad for Ram Mandir. Zubair had claimed that the event was cancelled, but the video was later played in Times Square.

Number 16

On his troll page ‘Unofficial Subramanian Swamy’, he had claimed that BJP was stealing EVMs from strong rooms. “FactHunt” fact-checked the claims, after which he put the blame on one of the admins of the page.

Number 17

During farmers’ protests in early 2021, he shared a photograph and claimed that the farmers were being treated like terrorists by the police. Later it was found that the photograph was from 2013 when UPA was in power at the centre. The photograph was first published by Kavita Krishnan.

Number 18

In April 2019, after an Islamic terror attack at a Sri Lankan church, a minister wrote a letter stating intelligence officers were already aware of the possible attack. When Twitter users and prominent personalities like Abhijit Majumdar and Anand Ranganathan shared the letter, Zubair called it fake in a bid to protect the Muslim terrorists. Interestingly, the letter was published by the Sri Lankan minister himself on Twitter.

Number 19

In May 2018, OpIndia had published reports regarding the innocence of Vishal Jangotra in the Kathua case, which was criticized by Zubair. Later the court found that he was innocent.

Number 20

In January 2022, he mixed up districts with assembly constituencies to defend the Samajwadi Party, which had used old Islamic names of the constituencies in candidate lists. Mohammed Zubair posted two candidate lists published by SP and BJP for UP Assembly elections and alleged that both parties used old names for districts renamed by the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP govt. However, in reality, he was “confused” between the constituency names and district names.

Number 21

Mohammed Zubair, was recently in soup when his old tweets mocking Hindu gods surfaced in light of the Nupur Sharma episode. It was Zubair who had shared an edited clip of former BJP leader Nupur Sharma’s remarks, which eventually led to targeted reverberation of ‘Sar Tan Se Juda’ solgans in different parts of the country with mobs baying for Nupur Sharma’s blood. It also led to the killing of several innocent Hindus who had supported Nupur Sharma.

Number 22

Zubair’s partner Pratik Sinha had once used a picture of 2014 to show a woman suffering due to demonatisation in 2016.

Number 23

Another time in 2016, Pratik Sinha tweeted a picture of 2004 to portray a negative image of the condition of cow in Gujarat and spread canards about Gau Rakshaks.

Number 25

He had also pushed the oft-repeated lie peddled by opposition parties about PM Modi promising 15 lakhs in bank accounts of people.

This lie has been busted a number of times as PM Modi during a campaign had only made a comparison to the amount of black money stashed abroad.

Number 26

In an attempt to target PM Modi and his clean Ganga initiative, Pratik Sinha had misled people by sharing the headline of a article about which said “Public money wasted, not a drop of Ganga cleaned: NGT” when in fact the article had praised the Centre’s initiatve.

Number 27

Once, he had used a media clip claiming that the UP police stopped a marriage of couples from different faith. However, the action was taken by the UP police based on a missing complaint received from the girl’s family.

Number 28

On 10 October 2022, leftist-Islamist propaganda outlet The Wire had published a story in which it alleged that BJP IT Cell Head Amit Malviya can get any social media post on Facebook or Instagram taken down because Meta had given him special privileges.

The propaganda outlet went ahead publishing one more story on 11 October 2022 in an attempt to establish that the documents they have were not fabricated.

Both these stories were categorically refuted by Meta’s head of communications Andy Stone and stated that the stories was based on fabricated documents.

But Alt News co-founder Zubair amplified The Wire’s story by retweeting the articles only to quitely un-retweet them later.

It is this fakenews-peddling propagandist duo that the interational publication TIME had exalted as people in the ‘Nobel Peace Prize favourites’ which too turned out to be a hoax.

The truth is that Zubair and Sinha were never nominated and it was just a speculative list peddled by TIME.

However, the hoax too was retweeted by the alleged ‘fact-checker’.

So, that’s another one added to the list of fake news peddled by Alt News.

(With inputs from OpIndia)

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