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In a world full of “fake news” that US President Trump keeps harping on about, India had a fake report from an unverified website going viral, which claimed the Congress to be the “fourth most corrupt political party in the world.”
Published by BBC News Point, many mistook it for the real BBC. However, it was quickly debunked as being fake.
Not only is the website fake, the article is haphazardly and shoddily written. There is no basis on which the party has been declared as corrupt and the author’s clear vendetta against certain ideals of parties shows through.
For making a weighty claim of corruption, it needs to be heavily substantiated.
Indians did fall prey to the article, given the misuse of BBC’s name and the clout that comes with it.
The website opindia.com published their own article questioning whether the Congress was just declared to be corrupt by BBC, but they did add the fake news aspect to their piece as an after-thought.
Clearly, people were also duped into believing the news without checking the veracity of the website.
This only goes to show how fake news is a menace and the modern equivalent of an internet wildfire which only gets fuelled further by trolls.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)