The first thing that you see when you open an article on a site called
hamariaawaz.in
is four little squares with animated GIFs of intense porn action right on top of the page. The right sidebar has a title “केवल महिलाओ के लिए (Only for women)” and has 5 big squares with some more intense porn action. In the main body of the post, there’s a title section and thereafter a body section. At the end of this, there are 15 medium sized squares spread over 5 rows with 15 more GIFs of animated porn action. The sub-heading of the website describes the site as follows: “Hindi News, Taja Khabar, Latest News, Breaking News, Hindi Samachar, India News”.
There are Modi supporters who actually believe that a piece of writing embedded between 21 squares of intense porn action can actually be real news. Not only do they believe that it is real news, they are also extremely enraged at CPI-ML leader Kavita Krishnan who in one of the articles on this website has been accused of calling PM Modi impotent and stating that she wants ‘free sex’ for women – “कविता कृष्णन ने पीएम मोदी को बताया नपुंसक, रखी फ्री सेक्स की मांग”.
In the article, it is alleged that while addressing an Adivasi women’s meeting in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, she said that women should have the freedom to have sex with anybody. It is also claimed in the article that she accused Mr Modi of pushing Adivasis to starvation because of demonetisation while letting the rich defaultors get away scott-free. If is further claimed in the article that she called Mr Modi impotent on the pretext that Mr Modi abandoned his wife and if he can do so, how can he be trusted with the country?
उधोगपतियों का अरबों-खरबों का टैक्स माफ करने वाला यह प्रधानमंत्री देशद्रोही है गद्दार है| जो प्रधानमंत्री अपनी पत्नी का नहीं हुआ वह देश का कैसे होगा |यह देश का दुर्भाग्य है कि भारत को नरेंद्र मोदी जैसा नपुंसक प्रधानमंत्री मिला |
कविता कृष्णन ने अपने इस महिला सम्मेलन में आदिवासी महिलाओं को संबोधित करते हुए कहा कि हम महिलाओं को फ्री सेक्स की आजादी चाहिए. हमें किसी भी पुरुष के साथ सेक्स करने की आजादी चाहिए| हम महिलाएं किसी भी मनपसंद पुरुष के साथ शारीरिक संबंध बनाकर अपने काम वासना की पूर्ति कर सकें| जब पुरुष किसी भी महिला के साथ शारीरिक संबंध बना सकता है, तो हम महिलाओं को भी अधिकार होना चाहिए, हम लोग भी किसी भी मनचाहे पुरुष के साथ शारीरिक संबंध बना सकें |
While the new screams “FAKE” in your face, we still decided to cross verify it with Kavita Krishnan. When we spoke to her over a phone call, she stated that she’s never addressed any meeting in Bastar ever and the only time she went there was as part of a fact-finding team. When we asked her for her views about the fake propaganda that is going on against her, she stated:
In a Facebook post, Kavita also stated that she’s planning legal action against all the sites/portals which carried this news.
After speaking to Kavita, we dug in further to find the source of this news. By this time, the same piece of text, without a single word changed in the body of the text, but varying titles had already been posted to 15-20 sites and was shared thousands of time on social media. Here’s a sample.
Which one of them was the culprit who initiated this chain reaction? Via Facebook Search, we found out that a post by Kumar Sanu Bhardwaj on a Facebook group called ‘Rohit Sardana and Sudhir Chaudhary Fan Club’ at 2:54 pm on April 5th was the first public post regarding this issue and the article was from a site called chakravyuhindia.in.
Most of the websites that are shown in the screenshots above run because they post such fake news with click-bait headlines and they earn money from the advertisement clicks that follow. If one ‘news item’ goes viral, irrespective of the authenticity, the article is copied over verbatim to multiple sites hoping for some advertisement clicks on their websites too.
Recently, we showed how one Nita Pandey who has been accused of corruption was passed off as NDTV India journalist Ravish Kumar’s sister. We also showed how a website called newspur.in wrote about a non-existent fatwa against Zee Anchor Rohit Sardana and the issue trended the entire day on Twitter. Just like in the present case, newspur.in also runs purely because of advertisement clicks. Thus the fake news industry rolls on while the management of Facebook, Twitter, Google etc refuse to take action against such sites, thus endangering the lives and credibility of individuals who are being targeted by these fake news sites.
Independent journalism that speaks truth to power and is free of corporate and political control is possible only when people start contributing towards the same. Please consider donating towards this endeavour to fight fake news and misinformation.
