'Delete Fascism,' TIME Cover Featuring Narendra Modi Is Fake

Narendra Modi was featured as the 100 most influential people of 2021 compiled by TIME in September, 2021. Read the article here. TIME has been critical of Modi earlier and referred to him as India's Divider In Chief in a magazine cover in 2019.

The viral image shows a cover of TIME magazine dated October 25 / November 1, 2021, a close-up image of PM Modi and a message that reads 'Delete Fascism?' with options of 'Delete' and 'Cancel' listed below the message. It appears to show a 'delete' command that reflects on a smart phone.

A Twitter user captioned a tweet with the fake cover as "We are happy, we found the delete button, here you go #SaveIndiaFromBJP"

See the archived post here.

Other Twitter users also posted the same image. Check the archive here.

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Fact Check

The cover image also features headlines and author names of two other articles from the edition - 'Inside the damage' by Billy Perrico and 'Change Can't Wait' by Roger Mc Namee.

BOOM was unable to find an article titled 'Inside The Damage' by an authore Billy Perrico on the TIME website. Instead, we found Billy Perrigo, a staff writer of the magazine.

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Taking this as a cue, we checked Perrigo's Twitter handle and found the original magazine cover with Mark Zuckerberg.

The cover has the same date as the viral fake cover with Narendra Modi's image on it. The original article reads, "How Facebook forced a reckoning by shutting down the team that put people ahead of politics." TIME tweeted the cover image and link of the same article on October 8, 2021 as well.

Below is a comparison of the real and fake cover. NDTV's report on the latest TIME cover can be read here.

TIME's archive vault is yet to upload the cover of the latest issue on its site.

Perrigo's article on Facebook and Zuckerberg talks about the giant's civic-integrity team led by former head Samidh Chakrabarti and whistle blower Frances Haugen, who disclosed Facebook's internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and The Wall Street Journal . Read Facebook's response here.

BOOM has earlier debunked several fake covers of TIME magazine targeting PM Modi, US President Joseph Biden and former US President DonaldTrump.

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