Viral: Photoshopped image of Times of India article on Modi and Xi

An image of a purported report published in Times of India is circulating on social media, the headline of which says, ‘Modi, Xi will mate 6 times in 24 hours’. The report has been filed from Wuhan.

Viral since last year

The alleged clipping was also shared by several social media users last year.

Photoshopped clipping

The headline of the report has been photoshopped and this is evident by observing the alphabets carefully – ‘t’ and ‘e’ in the word ‘mate’ are different from ‘t’ and ‘e’ in the word ‘times’. ‘t’ is longer and ‘e’ is bigger in the word ‘mate’.

Also, there is a visible change in texture around the word ‘mate’ when zoomed.

Times of India had also put out a tweet clarifying that the image is photoshopped and that the headline of the article actually reads, ‘Modi, Xi will meet 6 times in 24 hours’.

A photoshopped image of our headline on the Modi-Xi meet is doing the rounds. All our editions carry the correct headline. You can see the difference when the correct & fake headlines are placed together. The one on the right is the photoshopped image with the word ‘mate’ tilted. pic.twitter.com/76NZGuFpR1

— Times of India (@timesofindia) April 27, 2018

This was also corroborated by some Twitter users who posted photographs of the article taken from the newspaper. After being informed that they’ve fallen for a photo-shopped image, many acknowledged their error of judgement.

As I’ve already explained I’ve deleted the tweet as soon as I realised it was fake. My apologies to anybody who is misled.

— Vinod K. Jose (@vinodjose) April 27, 2018

I deleted the previous Modi-Xi headline because it was not a typo but a photoshop. I’m not sure either implied that Modi and Xi were *actually* going to go beyond hugging, so probably no need to get *quite so hot* under the collar.

— Stanley Pignal (@spignal) April 27, 2018

Deleted!

— William Dalrymple (@DalrympleWill) April 27, 2018

The two leaders are scheduled to have a series of meetings on important global, regional and bilateral issues during the informal two-day summit at Wuhan.