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| - Fact Check: How India Today video was given an ugly twist
Facebook page Politics Today (@Namobharat 2019) posted this misleading video with the caption "Why Modi again?? Watch this!". The page, which has about four lakh followers, was created on December 22, 2017.
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India Today Fact Check
The video is misleading as only selective portions from an old video have been stitched together, excluding all critical comments.
Politics is all about perception, it is often said. Perception battles -- and the politics that drive them -- reach higher in the run-up to big elections, as what media reports, opinion makers and senior journalists have to say about the incumbent government as well as challengers become key to voter choice.
But there are all kinds of mischief between the cup and the lip. For instance, a video clip being widely being shared on social media that shows senior journalists associated with the India Today Group eulogising the "dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi". The 4 minute-6 second video was posted on Facebook page 'Politics Today' (@Namobharat 2019) on February 9 has already been shared thousands of times. People also tweeted about this viral video.
@sardesairajdeep @narendramodi
pic.twitter.com/6LUx0AuN8K Umashankar Singh (@umashankarsingh) February 11, 2019
The archived version of the video can be seen here.
India Today Fact Check found that the viral video has been mischievously edited. Some comments have been selectively picked up to stitch together a video which presents a misleading picture. The original video is 25-minute long and is more than a year-and-a-half old. The special show titled, 'The Good The Bad The Ugly - Three Years Under Modi’, was produced by India Today TV in May 2017 when the Modi government had completed three years in office. The show was uploaded on the official YouTube channel of India Today on May 20, 2017, and can be watched below.
Facebook page 'Politics Today' (@Namobharat 2019) posted this misleading video with the caption: "Why Modi again ?? Watch this !". The page, which has about four lakh followers, was created on December 22, 2017.
Looking at the original video of India Today, it is clear that all critical comments made by senior journalists such as Rajdeep Sardesai, Raj Chengappa and Javed Ansari in the show have been deliberately dropped. As the name suggests, the programme analysed the good, the bad and the ugly performances of the three years of the Modi government in 2017. But only comments from the initial part which talked about the good were carved out and put together in this viral video. There are top and bottom bands on the video to hide the India Today logo and the text which would have made it clear that it is an old video from 2017.
More than 21,000 people shared the video and thousands commented on it at the time of filing the story.
In the show, Rajdeep Sardesai can be seen saying, "If I am a minority in India today, I would feel a sense of fear." Similarly, Javed Ansari had commented: "Kashmir and the Naxal problem remain the same." While talking in the show, Raj Chengappa had red-flagged "the jobless growth". None of these have found place in the video posted by Facebook page Politics Today.
We reached out to these senior journalists for their comments on the misleading video. Rajdeep Sardesai called it a "mischievous political spin". "To twist the report on three years of the Modi government by selective use of footage is to push a fake narrative which needs to be called out. I remain neither ally nor adversary of those in power but someone who believes in holding up the mirror, which is exactly what this programme did," he said.
Senior journalist Raj Chengappa tweeted the original video, saying "half facts are dangerous".
Half facts are dangerous to circulate. This is not a contemporary video but are mischievously selected extracts from an India Today programme titled: Three years of the Modi Govt: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly done in 2017. Here is the original link: https://t.co/qrXiCHO5I0 Raj Chengappa (@rajchengappa) February 11, 2019
Javed Ansari called this "the handiwork of the dirty tricks department". "The portion in which I was critical has been mischievously edited out to give a distorted picture. People should carefully go through the original video before passing judgement," he cautioned.
India Today also approached the admin of the Facebook page asking for the reason behind the distorted video. The admin replied saying, "I got the link of the video from my video editor ... will be posting the other part of the video also." Later, a line was added below the viral video on the Facebook page which now says, "There is another part of the video in which they have criticised the Modi government."
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