AltNews.in

Alt News
Founded 2017
Founder Pratik Sinha
Headquarters India
Products Web portal
Parent Pravda Media Foundation[1]
Website www.altnews.in

AltNews.in is an Indian fact checking website, run by former software engineer Pratik Sinha.[2] The website was launched on 9 February 2017 to combat the phenomenon of fake news,[3][4][5] and 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.[6]

Pratik Sinha is the son of Mukul Sinha, who was a lawyer, human rights activist who fought mainly for communal riot victims.[7][8] In 2017, Pratik Sinha was invited to the Google NewsLab Asia-Pacific Summit to discuss potential solutions to fake news.[2] Since launching the website, he has received threats to his life, demanding that he stop producing content.[9][10]

Exposés by Altnews have occasionally received coverage in the mainstream media. Altnews identified the individuals running the Hindu right-wing website DainikBharat.org.[11] Sinha demonstrated that a video purportedly of a Hindu man being lynched by Muslims in Bihar was in fact from Bangladesh. 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.[2][12][13][14] According to the BBC, a report by Altnews 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.[13][14]

References

  1. ↑ "Top 7 Platforms That Are Busting Fake News On Social Media". Analytics India. Retrieved 10 February 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 Sengupta, Saurya (1 July 2017). "On the origin of specious news". Retrieved 7 November 2017 – via The Hindu.
  3. ↑ "Fake news in the time of the internet". The Financial Express. 28 May 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  4. ↑ "10 Instances That Show A Fake News Explosion Is Taking Place In India". HuffPost. 26 May 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  5. ↑ Dhawan, Himanshi (15 May 2017). "Breaking fake news". The Times of India. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  6. ↑ "How Alt News is trying to take on the fake news ecosystem in India". Firstpost. 4 June 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  7. ↑ Sen, Shreeja (12 May 2014). "Gujarat riots activist Mukul Sinha dies at 63". livemint.com. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  8. ↑ Janmohamed, Zahir. "Mukul Sinha, self-effacing Modi opponent and labour organiser who disliked being called a leader". scroll.in. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
  9. ↑ "News website owner gets threat call from 'gangster'". The Indian Express. 10 March 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  10. ↑ "Mukul Sinha's son gets threat call from 'Pujari'". The Times of India. Retrieved 9 November 2017.
  11. ↑ "Inside the world of Hindu right wing fake news website DainikBharat.org". Hindustan Times. 13 June 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  12. ↑ Bhuyan, Anoo. "What the Indian Media Can Learn From the Global War on Fake News". thewire.in. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  13. 1 2 "India ministry mocked for 'appropriating' Spain border". BBC News. 15 June 2017. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  14. 1 2 Imran Ahmed Siddiqui (15 June 2017). "Border lights illuminate a Moroccan mockery". The Telegraph. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
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