As liberals keep trying to mock the people from right wing for protesting against Tanishq for an ad film that appeared to glorify ‘love jihad’, one journalist was caught spreading a morphed image to image such a social media user. On Thursday, a journalist with The Independent, Stuti Mishra, shared an image on Twitter, alleging that it is the screenshot of a tweet by social media user Shefali Vaidya, which turned out to be fake.
The screenshot showed a tweet by Shefali Vaidya, saying that she had bought a gold neckware set from Tanishq worth Rs 112484, and she is going to sell this ‘jihadi’ brand any local store because she does not want any such Hindophobic brand in her home. The tweet also include an image of the jewellery set.
Stuti Mishra added image in her tweet, showing that the image ‘used’ by Shefali is of a alloy jewel set costing just Rs 199, not over lakh.
Using these images, Stuti Mishra tried to imply that those who are calling to boycott Tanishq actually can’t afford products of the company, therefore this boycott call is hollow. She tweeted along with the images, “what #BoycottTanishq is on Twitter and what it actually is. From one lakh twelve thousand to 200 rupees.”
But soon netizens discovered that the image shared as screenshot of Shefali’s tweet is fake and it has been used in an image editing software. One Social media user pointed out how the @ and y in the user account name are cut off at the bottom, which would not happen if the screenshot was taken from an actual tweet.
Even after several Twitter users pointed out the tell-tale signs that the image is fake, Stuti Mishra refused to budge, saying she will delete the tweet if someone can confirm it is photoshoped. She added that “Shefali Vaidya has a long history of fake and hateful tweets and it won’t be surprising to anyone if this came from her.”
After some time, she deleted the tweet, and posted another tweet saying that someone informed her on Direct Message that it is indeed fake. Thus, the journalist accepted that she had posted a fake tweet to defame Shefali Vaidya.
But even after getting caught spreading fake tweets which she herself admitted, ironically she continued to assert that Shefali Vaidya has a history of fake tweets.
It is notable that while the journalist with Independent accuses others of hate for calling for boycotting a brand, she herself is known for hateful comments. When home minister Amit Shah was infected with swing flu in January 2019, she had posted a wishful tweet, “People die of sine flu, right?”.
