A viral photo purporting to show a New York Times article on the Aam Aadmi Party's recent roadshow in Gujarat and claiming the gathering set a world record of the highest number of people at politically rally, is morphed and fake.
The headline of the morphed photo reads 'Aam Aadmi Party Sets world record of gathering highest number of people in a political rally'.
The English language daily's PR team has refuted the claim calling the screenshot a 'mocked up image'.
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The image is viral in the backdrop of a recently held AAP roadshow in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Punjab counterpart Bhagwant Mann on April 2, 2022 led a roadshow in the poll-bound state and appealed to voters to give them a chance in the BJP-ruled state.
Social media posts show an image from the AAP's rally under the masthead of The New York Times. The headline 'Aam Aadmi Party Sets world record of gathering highest number of people in a political rally' is followed with a strap reading 'Nearly 25 crores people attended Arvind Kejriwal's rally in Gujarat after his Landslide win in Punjab Election'.
Several social media users have mocked The New York Times while using the statistics on Gujarat's population as captions.
A caption with a Facebook post sharing the picture reads 'Population of Gujarat is 6.5 crores. I guess, what New York Times meant was that AAP spent a record Rs 25 crores to hold a rally in Gujarat'.
View the post here.
The image has been shared from multiple Facebook pages and Twitter handles with similar captions mocking the American daily.
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Fact Check
BOOM found a reply by The PR team of The New York Times calling the photo a 'mocked image'.
Replying to a tweet of journalist Rana Ayyub where she shared the same image tagging the American daily, the NYT communications team wrote 'The screenshot in that tweet is a mocked up image. The New York Times did not write or publish that story. Our coverage can be found at http://nytimes.com/spotlight/india'.
Additionally, we did not find any article by the English daily covering AAP's Gujarat rally.
BOOM found the viral image carried in a news report published in ETV Bharat on April 2.
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