“Friends, Indians, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come here to bury fake news, not to praise it.
The evil that men share lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.”
Do the incessant forwards on your family WhatsApp group leave you confused? Don’t know what to believe and what to delete?
Worry not, Dr WebQoof is here.
In a Milky Way galaxy exclusive on WebQoof TV, India’s most reputed fake news doctor gives you the perfect prescription to bust fake news.
From fake videos and doctored images to even fake text WhatsApp forwards, find out the precautions you must take to avoid becoming a WebQoof.
What’s a WebQoof, you ask?
So catch the special episode of ‘What The Fake’ on WebQoof TV and keep the fake news virus at bay!
A Dangerous Type of 'Viral'
Here’s a look at the ‘viral’ cases Dr WebQoof will dissect on ‘What The Fake’.
Case 1: Hours after the Indian cricket team lost to Pakistan in the Champions Trophy final this year, a video that showed “Indian Muslims celebrating India’s loss to Pakistan” went viral on social media.
Was it real? Was it fake? Dr WebQoof has the answers.
Case 2: How do you diagnose whether an image you see on social media is authentic? Like this one, tweeted by the official Twitter account of BJP’s Delhi unit before the municipal polls in the capital. Were those streetlights really installed by the BJP-run MCD? Wait, are these streetlights from Delhi in the first place?
Dr WebQoof tells you how to check if a still from a Bhojpuri movie is passed off as an image from communal violence in West Bengal.
Case 3: And worst of all, what do you do when there is neither a video nor an image but just a plain text forward? Like the following forward about a mysterious ‘Mr A’, which went viral on WhatsApp, Facebook and even LinkedIn.
The following is a screenshot of the viral forward.
But is Mr A real or imaginary? Dr WebQoof tells you how to get to the bottom of it.
Don't Be a WebQoof: Fact-Check Before You Forward
The moral of the story? Don’t believe all you see on the Internet. Fact-check before you forward. And don’t be a WebQoof.
Like Dr WebQoof says:
When it comes to fake news, self-medication is always helpful!
Video Editor: Prashant Chauhan
Special Thanks: Pratik Sinha and AltNews
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)