Alt News
Founded2017
Headquarters
Ahmedabad
,
India
OwnerPravda Media Foundation[1]
Founder(s)Pratik Sinha, Mohammed Zubair[2]
ProductsWeb portal
URLwww.altnews.in

Alt News is an Indian non-profit fact checking website founded and run by former software engineer Pratik Sinha and Muhammed Zubair.[3][4] It was launched on 9 February 2017 to combat fake news.[5][6][7] Alt News was a signatory partner of the International Fact-Checking Network until April 2020.[8][13]

History

Alt News was founded in Ahmedabad[14] by Pratik Sinha, a former software engineer and son of Mukul Sinha, who was a lawyer and the founder-president of Jan Sangharsh Manch.[15][16] Pratik Sinha became interested in exposing fake news when he began working with his activist parents in India. He had followed the rise of fake news as early as 2013 but was moved to start the website after realizing the impact of social media in 2016, when four Dalit boys were flogged for skinning a dead cow in Una, Gujarat. He quit freelancing as a software engineer in 2016 and founded Alt News the next year.[14]

Since launching the website, Sinha has received threats to his life, demanding that he stop producing content.[17][18] In 2022, Zubair was arrested by Delhi police for "hurting religious sentiments"[19] by a satirical tweet from 2018 —showing a scene from a comedy film released in 1982— which was complained to be disregarding of Hindu sentiments by an anonymous Twitter user; journalist bodies, human rights organizations, and the political opposition perceived the arrest as a revenge against his role in the 2022 BJP Muhammad remarks controversy and Alt News' work of fighting disinformation in the society, while noting of diminishing press freedom in Modi's India.[20][21][22][23][24] He was sent to 14 days judicial custody under FRCA act for allegedly recieving funds from foreign countries including Pakistan.[25]

Process

Alt News works by monitoring misinformation, primarily identifying that are sufficiently viral. They use CrowdTangle, a Facebook tool that publishers use to track how content spreads across the internet, for monitoring Facebook pages that have put out misinformation at some point in the past and are on either side of the ideological spectrum. They use TweetDeck, a Twitter management tool to similarly monitor content on Twitter posted by people who have been known to tweet misinformation frequently. They also monitor multiple WhatsApp groups that they have been able to infiltrate and also receive content from users who alert them on social media and WhatsApp.[26]

Popular work

Alt News identified the individuals running the Hindu right-wing website DainikBharat.org.[27] Sinha demonstrated that a video purportedly of a Hindu man being lynched by Muslims in Bihar was in fact from Bangladesh. He also exposed Delhi based lawyer Prashant Patel who falsely compiled many fake news on his Twitter account.[citation needed] He also showed that a video allegedly depicting a Marwari girl married to a Muslim man being burnt to death for not wearing a burqah was Guatemalan in origin.[4][28][29][30] According to the BBC, a report by Alt News in June 2017 demonstrating that the Indian Home Ministry had used a picture of the Spanish-Moroccan border to claim it had installed floodlights on India's borders led to the ministry facing online mockery.[29][30] Sinha has compiled a list of more than 40 of what he describes as fake news sources, most of which he says support right wing views.[31]

The Alt News team has written a book titled "India Misinformed: The True Story"[32] published by HarperCollins which was released in March 2019.[33] The book has been "pre-endorsed" by Arundhati Roy.[34] In 2017, Sinha was invited to the Google NewsLab Asia-Pacific Summit to discuss potential solutions to fake news.[4]

References

  1. ^ "Top 7 Platforms That Are Busting Fake News On Social Media". Analytics India. Retrieved 10 February 2018.
  2. ^ Joy, Shemin (6 September 2020). "FIR against Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair on NCPCR complaint". Deccan Herald.
  3. ^ Manish, Sai (8 April 2018). "Busting fake news: Who funds whom?". Business Standard. Retrieved 3 March 2020 – via Rediff.com.
  4. ^ a b c Sengupta, Saurya (1 July 2017). "On the origin of specious news". Retrieved 7 November 2017 – via The Hindu.
  5. ^ "Fake news in the time of the internet". The Financial Express. 28 May 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  6. ^ "10 Instances That Show A Fake News Explosion Is Taking Place In India". HuffPost. 26 May 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  7. ^ Dhawan, Himanshi (15 May 2017). "Breaking fake news". The Times of India. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  8. ^ "Pravda Media Foundation Profile". International Fact-Checking Network, Poynter.
  9. ^ Alawadhi, Neha (4 May 2020). "WhatsApp launches chatbot to bust fake news, allies with global group". Business Standard India. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  10. ^ Tiwari, Ayush. "The embarrassment that is PIB Fact Check: Who fact-checks this 'fact checker'?". Newslaundry. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  11. ^ "A fact-checker's life: Exposing fake news and communalism, surviving social boycott". Moneycontrol. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  12. ^ Mantas, Harrison (20 May 2020). "Why would Indian police issue and then withdraw a manual on misinformation? Political divides could be the answer". Poynter Institute.
  13. ^ [9][10][11][12]
  14. ^ a b "To stop misinformation, ask questions: Interview with Alt News founder Pratik Sinha". The News Minute.
  15. ^ Sen, Shreeja (12 May 2014). "Gujarat riots activist Mukul Sinha dies at 63". livemint.com. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  16. ^ Janmohamed, Zahir. "Mukul Sinha, self-effacing Modi opponent and labour organiser who disliked being called a leader". scroll.in. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  17. ^ "News website owner gets threat call from 'gangster'". The Indian Express. 10 March 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  18. ^ "Mukul Sinha's son gets threat call from 'Pujari'". The Times of India. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
  19. ^ "Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair arrested for 'hurting religious sentiments'". Hindustan Times. 27 June 2022. Retrieved 2 July 2022.
  20. ^ Yasir, Sameer (28 June 2022). "Arrest of Journalist in India Adds to Press Freedom Concerns". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
  21. ^ Welle (www.dw.com), Deutsche. "India: Arrest of Muslim fact-checker raises concerns over press freedom | DW | 28.06.2022". DW.COM. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
  22. ^ "Delhi police arrest Muslim journalist Mohammed Zubair over tweet from 2018". the Guardian. 28 June 2022. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
  23. ^ "Arrest of Indian Muslim journalist sparks widespread outrage". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
  24. ^ "Indian journalist arrested over Twitter post". Financial Times. 28 June 2022. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
  25. ^ "Bail denied to Zubair, court sends him to 14-day judicial custody". The Indian Express. 2 July 2022. Retrieved 2 July 2022.
  26. ^ "Alt News co-founder Pratik Sinha on the fake-news ecosystem in India". The Caravan.
  27. ^ "Inside the world of Hindu right wing fake news website DainikBharat.org". Hindustan Times. 13 June 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  28. ^ Bhuyan, Anoo. "What the Indian Media Can Learn From the Global War on Fake News". thewire.in. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  29. ^ a b "India ministry mocked for 'appropriating' Spain border". BBC News. 15 June 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  30. ^ a b Imran Ahmed Siddiqui (15 June 2017). "Border lights illuminate a Moroccan mockery". The Telegraph. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  31. ^ "How Alt News is trying to take on the fake news ecosystem in India". Firstpost. 4 June 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  32. ^ Sinha, P; Shaikh, S; Sidharth, A (2019). India Misinformed : The True Story. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-93-5302-838-1. OCLC 1274781508.
  33. ^ "Upcoming book to lay bare propaganda of misinformation and hoaxes". The Times of India. IANS. 25 February 2019. Retrieved 13 March 2019.((cite web)): CS1 maint: others (link)
  34. ^ "Upcoming book to lay bare propaganda of misinformation and hoaxes". Outlook India. 22 February 2019. Retrieved 13 March 2019.

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