A viral image claims to show New York Times’ international edition published on Friday, 21 May, in which an image of crocodile can be seen on the front page with the text: ‘India’s PM cried.’
This comes on the back of Prime Minister Narendra Modi getting emotional on Friday while stating that the COVID-19 second wave has put the health system under pressure, and it has to be fought on many fronts.
However, we found that the viral image is a doctored one and NYT hadn’t carried any such image and information in its Friday’s international edition.
CLAIM
The claim along with the image reads: “Here’s some international news. #CrocodileTears.”
Advocate Prashant Bhushan also tweeted the viral image with the caption “Crocodile tears!”. However, the tweet was later taken down.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
Using relevant keywords, we searched for a New York Times article on PM Narendra Modi crying, however it yielded no results.
As the viral image claimed that it is from Friday, 21 May’s NYT international edition, we searched for the concerned edition on NYT’s official website. However, we found that not only is its lead image different from the one seen in the viral photo, but also the story on PM Modi does not feature anywhere on the front page of NYT’s official edition.
Here’s a comparison of the viral image and front page of NYT’s Friday edition.
The text above the newspaper’s lead image mentions: “There is no alternative. Solar energy is a blessing from God.”
The photo caption along with the lead image in the official edition reads: “Solar panels in Binnish, Syria. People whose lives have been upended by 10 years of war have embraced solar power simply because it is the cheapest source of energy around.”
However, it can be seen that the other stories mentioned in the viral image are same as NYT’s official international edition.
We also compared the masthead of the two and found that the appearance of the dateline and the words ‘International Edition’ is not the same.
Further, we found that Twitter account ‘The Daily New York Times’ that identifies itself as a parody handle had tweeted the viral image and later mentioned that it’s a piece of satire.
Evidently, a morphed image of New York Times’ international edition was used to claim that the newspaper used a crocodile’s photo to say that PM Modi cried.
(Update: The story has been updated to include Advocate Prashant Bhushan’s tweet making the false claim that was later deleted.)
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