Alt News

Alt News is an Indian non-profit fact checking website founded and run by former software engineer Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair.[3][4] It was launched on 9 February 2017 to combat fake news. In October 2022 Harsh Mander (author, activist and director of the Center for Equity Studies in New Delhi), along with the campaign he launched in 2017, Karwan-e-Mohabbat ("Caravan of Love"), a campaign supporting and showing solidarity with the victims of hate crimes, along with Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha have been nominated in the Henrik Urdal's (Peace Research Institute Oslo Director) list of "worthy candidates"/"worthy recipients" for 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. A note on the official website of Peace Research Institute Oslo read, "Other worthy candidates for a prize focused on combating religious extremism and intolerance in India are Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha, the co-founders of Alt News, a fact-checking site making significant contributions to debunking misinformation aimed at vilifying Muslims in India".[5][6][7] Alt News was a signatory partner of the International Fact-Checking Network until April 2020.[8][13]

Not to be confused with Alternative newspaper.

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

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 July 2022, co-founder Zubair was arrested by Delhi Police for allegedly "hurting religious sentiments".[19] The charges under IPC section 295A and section 67 of the IT Act were pressed for a satirical tweet he made in 2018, in which he shared an unedited screenshot from a 1983 Indian comedy film Kissi Se Na Kehna by Hrishikesh Mukherjee.[20] The tweet 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.[21]

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.[22]

Alt News identified the individuals running the Hindu right-wing website DainikBharat.org.[23] 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. 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][24][25][26] 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.[25][26] 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.[27]

The Alt News team has written a book titled "India Misinformed: The True Story"[28] published by HarperCollins which was released in March 2019.[29] The book has been "pre-endorsed" by Arundhati Roy.[30] 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. 22 January 2018. 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. Sengupta, Saurya (1 July 2017). "On the origin of specious news". The Hindu. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  5. "Home – Peace Research Institute Oslo". www.prio.org.
  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. "To stop misinformation, ask questions: Interview with Alt News founder Pratik Sinha". The News Minute. 22 April 2019.
  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. "Kissi Se Na Kehna! Mohammed Zubair Arrested for Tweeting Photo from 1983 Hindi Film". The Wire. 28 June 2022. Retrieved 8 July 2022.
  21. See links below
  22. "Alt News co-founder Pratik Sinha on the fake-news ecosystem in India". The Caravan.
  23. "Inside the world of Hindu right wing fake news website DainikBharat.org". Hindustan Times. 13 June 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  24. Bhuyan, Anoo. "What the Indian Media Can Learn From the Global War on Fake News". thewire.in. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  25. "India ministry mocked for 'appropriating' Spain border". BBC News. 15 June 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  26. Imran Ahmed Siddiqui (15 June 2017). "Border lights illuminate a Moroccan mockery". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 7 November 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  27. "How Alt News is trying to take on the fake news ecosystem in India". Firstpost. 4 June 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  28. Sinha, P; Shaikh, S; Sidharth, A (2019). India Misinformed : The True Story. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-93-5302-838-1. OCLC 1274781508.
  29. "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)
  30. "Upcoming book to lay bare propaganda of misinformation and hoaxes". Outlook India. 22 February 2019. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
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