We are the internet generation that tends to trust information circulated on its social media feed, WhatsApp messages, web searches, and general online news from sources that we consider legitimate.
Sitting at our desktops and smartphones, we mostly accept the news throw at us without verifying its genuineness.
Here is a breakdown of fake/false stories that circulated on social media and was shared by media houses and public personalities to spread misinformation in the past few days.
1) Pakistan’s blunder at the United Nations
Following External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s much-publicised speech at the United Nations General Assembly where she branded Pakistan as “Terroristan” and an “exporter of terrorism”, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN whipped out an image of a Gazan and claimed that it was an image of a Kashmiri victim of Indian security forces.
Pakistan’s envoy to UN criticized for using fake image to illustrate alleged Indian atrocities in #JammuandKashmir.
(Pic: UN) pic.twitter.com/lAy6BqF8L7
— All India Radio News (@airnewsalerts) September 25, 2017
Rawya Abu Jom’a was wounded during the 2014 war in #Gaza. Credit: Heidi Levine راوية ابو جمعة من #غزة عقب اصابتها pic.twitter.com/WGCctdCZwS
— Dr. Ramy Abdu (@RamAbdu) March 27, 2015
The image Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi displayed was actually not a “pellet gun victim”. It was a photograph of a 17-year-old Gazan girl named Rawya abu Jom, who had been injured by shrapnel during an airstrike by Israeli forces. The picture was taken in July 2014 by American photojournalist Heidi Levine in July 2014 when she was covering the conflict (original image source).
The video of the Pakistan Ambassador’s speech can be viewed here (the moment where the Ambassador shows the image of the Gazan victim is at 6:39).
2) Increasingly, anti-Rohingya narrative pushed through fake images
The Rohingya refugee crisis has stirred a heated debate in India, with the government’s decision to deport all “illegal” Rohingya refugees generating mixed responses. Whatever be one’s opinion on how India should respond to the Rohingya refugee crisis, we should all agree that spreading false rumours on refugees is cheap, disgusting and never justified.
And yet, this is exactly what has been happening. Anti-Rohingya propaganda has relied on fake images and news stories to spread like wildfire on social media. The torchbearers of these lies have not spared even disease-stricken children from other countries to push their own agenda.
One such person was Prashant Patel Umrao, a Delhi High Court advocate with a verified Twitter account. Umrao tweeted an image of a Brazilian girl suffering from liver disease as a 9-12-year-old pregnant girl in a UN clinic “going to give birth to a child soon”. (Umrao has a long history of peddling fake news; a few examples can be read here.)
This child is not even from Myanmar. She is not pregnant. She is suffering from some kind of liver disease. https://t.co/rMXzLySMel pic.twitter.com/rGGewNkbvT
— BOOM FactCheck (@boomlive_in) September 25, 2017
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Posted by Garrafão do Norte on Sunday, November 20, 2016
Another instance of defaming and character-assassinating starving and helpless refugees was when Ravinder Sangwan (@Shanknaad), who tweeted an image of a little girl holding an infant. Without providing any source, this man said the image was of a Rohingya girl: “14 years old has 2 kids. Her husband is 56 yrs. He has six wives with 18 children”.
Look at her innocence!!Rohingya girl, 14 years old has 2 kids. Her husband is 56 yrs. He has six wives with 18 children ။ pic.twitter.com/9aqHly7viF
— Ravinder Sangwan (@Shanknaad) September 24, 2017
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Rohingya girl, 14 years old has 2 babies. One is 2 years and the other is 5 months old .Her husband is 56 yrs. He has…
Posted by India Rising on Sunday, September 24, 2017
When @Shanknaad was asked for his source, he failed to provide any links. BOOM traced the image to a BBC video on Rohingyas fleeing violence in Myanmar. The girl is in the video (at 2:06) but only as a few seconds in a video shot. There is no context, no background, no story: the tweet, which was shared widely on Twitter and Facebook, was false in context and malignant in intent.
.@Shanknaad Bluffmaster steals a grab from a video and invents a 56 year…
