Reading through the ‘Fact-check India’ Lens

Recently I was surfing the internet, trying to dig some stories onindian political newsand indian economy news where I came across a story about Mr Narender Modi that was respectfully hilarious. Covered by highly reputed Zee News and The Times of India the story read as follows:

"Nostradamus had predicted the rise of supreme leader Narendus"

(and the passages written by Nostradamus goes like this)

"Indus supremus gudjaratus status natus est

Patrus Theus boutiqus, studium bonus est

Namusprimum narendus est"

"The supreme leader of India will be born in the state of Gujarat

His father will sell tea in a shop

His first name will be narendus (Narendra)"

The above-written text spoke about the leadership of Mr Narender Modi in a highly dignified way. The text was said to have found by Francois Gautier who invented a tale about how he found passages of Nostradamus in a rather old and abandoned trunk. Hysterically Gautier keeps on finding such interesting stuff like once in 1999 he revealed that it was Nostradamus who had founded RSS 400 years ago. I mean, come on, anyone who reads these kinds of stories, they would be confused at first, laugh at it for a while and then will later question the authenticity of the news for sure. ‘Fake" off course but people do believe it at first, just like highly reputed news channels and leading print media platform to find it entirely believable tale and worthy of sharing it with people nationwide. Embarrassing? You think?

Call it lazy journalism or agenda-driven carefully planted stories, stories of these kind do circulate the media with full force and affect people’s views and opinions. Be it the entertainment news section,indian political news section or indian economy news section; news stories are cooked and served to public mostly in haste. In an unappreciative race to cover and break the leading story first to the readers, journalists often forget to do the Fact check. Hence, the distorted facts and misinformed content create confusion rather than clarifying issues at large.

For instance, I, a well-informed and well-educated citizen of India, would want some answers when I come around stories like these. And personally, I would go online and profoundly verify the information given. I would surf the internet and look for reliable sites to authenticate the news. And henceforth, enters ‘The True Picture’.

It is one such platform for anyone with internet privileges who wants to verify latest news and stories circulating the media nationwide. Through the in-depth Fact check India, the readers are presented with actual truth behind the leading stories. The True Picture team tries to dig deep and come with factual and numerical data to support the truth behind the already written stories. The Fact Check India technique primarily centres its attention into figuring out the truth and ways to reach a wider audience, exploring alternative formats, considering new and in-depth research, and focusing on the understanding of issues rather than rating political statements on their authenticity. The Data Science team at the True Picture will present fact-based insights and analyses while eliminating subjective biases. The stories written will cover both the quantitative as well as qualitative media analyses India trends with the help of modern natural language processing techniques.

For me at least, this is a start towards sensible and reliable journalism regarding authenticating the available news content. And Fact Check India is the best way to do it.

This article is written by sant kumar.it is about thetruepicture.The True Picture is one of the best dedicated FactChecker initiative in India.We verify statements and other claims made by those in public life.