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The Fauxy sends legal notice to Boom Live and its journalist for ‘fact-checking’ a satire article and calling them ‘fake news’

The fact-check article written by Boom Live reporter Mohammed Kudrati also targeted several social media handles for sharing the satirical article and trolling former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan for his previous remarks over the recession.

On September 14, popular satire website The Fauxy sent a legal notice to Boom Live and its journalist Mohammed Kudrati against the alleged false and malicious article published to ‘defame and malign’ its image. In its legal notice, The Fauxy alleged that an article published by Boom Live labelled them as ‘fake news, whereas The Fauxy categorically mentions that it is a satire website.

Supreme Court Advocate Shashank Shekhar Jha sent the notice on behalf of The Fauxy. In the notice accessed by OpIndia, it was mentioned that despite the fact that The Fauxy explicitly mentions everywhere that it is a satire website, Boom Live decided to “fact-check” a satire piece written on former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and claimed that The Fauxy spreads fake news in the guise of satire.

Excerpt from the notice.

The notice further pointed out that the recipients of the notice, that is, journalist Kudrati, is well aware of what satire is. The notice read, “In fact, you Noticees are very well aware of the difference between real and satire news and that you Noticee No. 3, In fact, has been retweeting the tweets from parody account yourself which shows that the act done by you against my client is a hit-job in order to gain some views for Noticee no. 1 while trying to destroy the reputation of my client with malafide intention.”

Furthermore, when @being_humor, the Twitter user who founded The Fauxy, called out Boom Live and Kudrati over the misleading report on the website, Kudrati protected his account on the social media platform. Speaking to OpIndia, @being_humor confirmed that no one had replied to his tweets when he called out Kudrati and Boom Live for the alleged hit job, thus, they decided to send a legal notice.

@Being_humor said, “The Fauxy was started as a satire website, and since day one, we have placed a disclaimer on our website and social media accounts that categorically define the website content as satire. Despite all the effort to ensure the readers do not confuse the content with ‘real news,’ certain fact-checking websites fact-check our articles with the malicious intent to defame us. It has been long since they are trying to discredit us for the work we do.”

The Fauxy clearly advice its readers not to “confuse the articles of The Fauxy as genuine and true”. Source: TheFauxy.com

He added, “There are some social media users that pick our content without authorization and make it their own. When these fact-checking websites fact-check such posts and find our satire-based articles as the source, they defame The Fauxy.” Being_Humor said, “Ironically, many of these fact-checking websites have founders who used to run satirical accounts themselves and currently are on bail for spreading fake news.”

The case of Boom Live and The Fauxy

On September 7, it was reported that Boom Live, which claims to be India’s first ever independent organization to ‘fight misinformation,’ accused a satire website named ‘the Fauxy’ of sharing false information. The ‘fact-check’ article written by Boom Live reporter Mohammed Kudrati also targeted several social media handles for sharing the satirical article and trolling former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan for his previous remarks over the recession.

It all started on September 2, when the satirical content writing website named ‘The Fauxy’ published an article titled, “India will be cornered if it doesn’t get hit by the recession like rest of the world: Raghuram Rajan.” The article poked former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan, who had been predicting an economic doom for India for years.

The Fauxy based its witty content on McKinsey CEO Bob Sternfels’ interview on September 2, in which he had said, “It is India‘s century, not India’s decade.” Sternfels, in his interview, also praised India for its economic growth and said that the country would be the world’s future expertise manufacturing unit with 20% of the global working population by 2047. The Fauxy humorously created Rajan’s response to this and indicated that the former RBI Governor would still be predicting India to be hit by a recession.

Though The Fauxy mentions everywhere that it is a satire website, Boom Live, which claims to fight misinformation, ‘fact-checked‘ a satire website and alleged that it was spreading misinformation. To dig the ‘truth’ out of humor, the channel also contacted Rajan, who is currently a professor of finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. The former RBI governor obviously refused to have made any such comments published on the satirical website.

Also, the Boom Live on September 6 targeted several right-wing social media users for sharing the article written by Fauxy. “Several right-wing social media users have taken The Fauxy’s article at face value and have further spread the misleading claim,” Boom Live quoted while it fact-checked a satirical website.

Boom Live failed to understand the satire and called out the Fauxy for spreading ‘misinformation.’ The so-called fact-checker also cited social media posts, not realizing that they had been mocking Raghuram Rajan for his perennial recession predictions.

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OpIndia Staff
OpIndia Staffhttps://www.opindia.com
Staff reporter at OpIndia

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