Did News18 Anchor Amish Devgan Credit Modi for Bagdadi’s Death?
A photoshopped graphic claiming journalist Amish Devgan credited Modi for Baghdadi’s killing has gone viral.
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CLAIM
A graphic pertaining to News18’s anchor Amish Devgan’s show ‘Aar Paar’ is generating a lot of buzz on social media.
The graphic, which includes a picture of news anchor Amish Devgan, has text which translates to “Did Modi’s pressure force Trump to eliminate Baghdadi?”
The ISIS Chief was killed by the US military in a raid conducted in northwest Syria.
Among those who shared the image is Congress leader Sachin Choudhary. However, he later deleted the tweet.
The graphic is being widely circulated on Twitter with the claim that Devgan, on his show, will discuss how Prime Minister Modi’s pressure on US President Donald Trump led to the killing of ISIS Chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The post has also found its way to Facebook.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The Quint could verify that the graphic has been photoshopped. A key word search using the terms ‘Amish Devgan’ and ‘Aar Paar’ directed us to the original graphic which was uploaded by the news channel on 24 September 2019 during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
WHAT WE FOUND OUT?
There are multiple red flags which hint towards the fact that the graphic template has been tampered with.
Firstly, on the top right corner of the graphic plate which is being shared online there’s an unexplained grey mark. Baghdadi is wearing a black robe and the background colour of the text plate is red. So where does this come from?
This comes from the original image which has the images of Modi and US President Donald Trump on one side and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on the other. A portion of the grey suit that Khan is seen wearing has not been superimposed with the brown colour used under the hindi text.
The second thing which makes it evident that the graphic is edited is the font size and the font style of the text which is written in Hindi. On viewing the template of the graphic used for the show, we could see that the fonts don’t match.
Another thing which doesn’t match the usual template or the show design is the background colour of the text plate. The usual colour used by the channel is brown but the post which is now viral uses red colour.
Further, the show anchor Amish Devgan took to Twitter to clarify that the image has been photoshopped and that the channel didn’t run a show crediting Modi for Baghdadi’s death.
We also checked News18’s website and YouTube channel and looked at episodes of Devgan’s show aired after Baghdadi’s death to find that no such episode had been aired.
(With inputs from SM Hoax Slayer)
(Update: The story has been updated to incorporate the original graphic which was edited and circulated online.)
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