When I heard about the concept of fact-checking years ago, I was on board immediately. I liked the idea of independent professionals who will help us verify news on social media. What can be better to bring sanity to the newly democratised media? An independent editorial board for social media that will instil a sense of journalistic ethics and fair play. I was pleased.
Fast forward to 2022, and I squirm when I watch Alt News winning medal after medal in mental gymnastics while defending every crime by Islamists and leftists. The latest being how terrorist organisation PFI’s supporters in Pune never shouted pro-Pakistan slogans. This is now my second favourite fact check in India after stones in Jamia Milia turned to wallets during CAA rioting. When your fact-checkers sound exactly like Baghdad Bob, it is fair to conclude the project has failed (or perhaps working exactly as envisaged) in India. Only this week Alt News was proudly flaunting fake news about the Nobel nominations of its founders as published by leftist propaganda magazine Time.
But that’s messy India. Certainly, things must be better in first-world countries with their higher educational standards? Recently we had a chance to analyse that during the anti-Hindu Leicester riots in the UK, the home of everything good and noble that exists in India as per our intelligentsia. From the very outset, the riots were fuelled by fake news and rumours targeting the Hindu community.
A small post-cricket clash was blown out of proportion by the vast Islamist network in the UK. From ‘Muslim youth stabbed’, a Muslim young girl approached for abduction to a Mosque attack, all the usual tropes used by the usual suspects were deployed. This wasn’t happening in chaotic Bangladesh anymore but in first world UK. Even the police seemed to have fallen for some of these rumours before they finally debunked them after days. Nobody expects the far-left Hinduphobic British mainstream media to call out anti-Hindu rumours. Instead, we watched in utter disgust as Guardian journalist Aina Khan went around Leicester accompanied by rumour super-spreader Majid Freeman, seemingly reporting what he told her. Surely the fact-checkers had a field day, debunking lie after lie, shining the light of facts and reason to dispel the ridiculous falsehood and help protect the peaceful but successful Hindu minority? Surely, right? I decided to investigate.
I found the following prominent anti-Hindu fake news during riots:
- Chants of “Death to Muslims”
- Hindutva groups on the rampage
- Attempted abduction of a Muslim girl by Hindus
- Attack on a Muslim traffic warden
- A coach from London filled with RSS people went to Leicester
- Attack on a mosque in Leicester
In comparison, I could not find any substantial fake news that went against the Muslim side. Fake news created to incite violence follows certain patterns to play on the fears and base instincts of mobs. Remember “CAA will take away the citizenship of Muslims” that resulted in the Delhi riots? Similarly, these fake reports that were amplified by Islamists & leftist media world over were designed to incite violence against the Hindu minority.
How did British fact-checkers respond to this deluge of dangerous fake news?
I analysed two UK-based fact-checkers, Reuters Fact Check and FullFact. Reuters is one of the largest global news organisations based in the UK and runs an active fact-checking service. A search and step-by-step perusal of their fact checks over the last 1 month shows they did not do a single fact check on the anti-Hindu fake news in Leicester. But on 5th October, when incorrect news spread that a Hindu temple was burned in Birmingham by Muslims, Reuters came alive and immediately fact-checked it. As if only fake news inconvenient to Muslims is worth fact-checking but not fake news spread by Islamists.
Now we have seen the same pattern of “selective fact-checking” in India too. But then Reuters is mainstream news media, and their anti-Hindu and pro-Muslim leanings are no more a question of debate, it’s now a mundane fact. The full extent of bias and sophistry of Reuters can be understood from the propaganda piece they got a Rina Chandran (of course) to write recently. In this ridiculous piece, the author alleges fake news mainly came from India because most tweets about the Leicester riots were from India (where a billion Hindus live!). But the author does not explain if fake news came from India, why did Reuters Fact Check not debunk ANY of it? Did they not want to identify the nature of fake news and the exact people who were spreading it? The answer is YES. It serves their agenda much better to instead write vague opinion pieces where out-of-context conclusions can be posted without any proof.
The second British fact-checker, Fullfact, is an ‘independent fact-checker’. It is not linked to any news organisation. Just like AltNews, it also has past associations with IFCN (International Fact-checking Network), a body associated with billionaire George Soros. A search on their website using both filters – date and relevance, returned no results on Leicester’s fake news.
So, I wrote to their media team. They replied that while they were concerned about Leicester’s fake news, they did not fact-check any as it was already fact-checked by others. My further queries about specific examples and instances have gone unanswered.
Some of their older Leicester-related fact checks are about how Muslims did not cause Covid spread in Leicester etc. See the pattern?
Conclusion: UK fact-checkers are no different to Indian fact-checkers. When it comes to fact-checking anti-Hindu news, they simply ignore it. But they will go out of their way to fact-check any anti-Muslim news, real or fake. It is my opinion that fact-checking is not being used for cleaning up news streams, but to manipulate and colour them using the ultimate power these organisations possess – the ability to select which news to fact-check. Their dubious links to virulently anti-Hindu billionaire Soros is just more substantive proof of their bias.
One has to then ask the important question – Did British fact checkers not want to fact-check Leicester fake news because they did not want to create a permanent record of the anti-Hindu nature of it and who was spreading it? One has to believe that this is not beyond the realm of possibility because it would be strategically tricky to fact-check the very narrative that they seemingly want to be furthered.
Let us all remember, selective fact-checking is just ‘fake news by other means’. As long as fact-checkers do not become transparent and give the power to readers to demand fact-checks, it will remain a tool of news manipulation. But it’s not all bad news. The good news is OpIndia will keep unapologetically writing about Leicester-like events to document global anti-Hindu attitudes. Keep reading.
