An old article by fake news website BBC News Hub calling the Congress party second most corrupt party in the world has made a comeback on social media. The article was shared by Union Minister of State for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Shandilya Giriraj Singh on Twitter who called the party, "You are shame for India".
You can access the archived version of the tweet here.
The fake news website BBC News Hub published the article titled, "Top 10 List Of Most Corrupt Political Party in the World 2018" on 5th July, 2018. The article had put Indian National Congress in the 2nd place with Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz PML(N) in the 1st place. The article has other parties from around the world like the Nazi party, Nationalist Fascist Party and others on its list.
Interestingly, a Facebook page 'I support Rahul Gandhi' had also shared another fake post attributed to BBC News Hub that claimed Narendra Modi to be the '7th most corrupt prime minister in the world in 2018.' BOOM had debunked the fake post. Click here to read the story in detail.
The same article had created quite a storm on Twitter in September this year when former Infosys board member Mohandas Pai shared it through a tweet. While initially Pai didn't delete the tweet despite being called out by netizens and the BBC, he later deleted it. Speaking to BOOM, Mohandas Pai said, “The information on the site is what matters. It has a list of political parties who are known to be corrupt. Most of them are 50 years old. All data points that they are corrupt. How does it matter whether the site is fake or not," he said. He added that he “knew” it was not a BBC owned site.
Screenshot of Mohandas Pai Tweet
A website named ‘bbcnewshub.com‘ has no connection to the actual BBC and is very similar to the fake news sites of BBC Point and Fox News Point that were busted in recent years.
The global broadcaster BBC has also been a target with many fake posts and forwards on social media. Such posts push out fake information and add a BBC home page link to add credibility to their message. Many of the users who receive such messages rarely click on the link to find the original source due to BBC's strong brand value and believe the information to be true. Recently, just prior to the Rajasthan elections, there was a fake opinion poll with BBC's homepage link attached to it in a bid to make it look credible. BOOM debunked the fake opinion poll. Click here to read the story in detail.
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a favourite and frequent target of the fake news brigade. In the past separate fake BBC surveys claimed the Congress and later on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were voted the fourth most corrupt party in the world.
This is not the first time Giriraj Singh has been in the news for courting controversy. Ahead of the general elections in April 2014, Singh had said that all those who are opposed to Narendra Modi should go to Pakistan as they have no place in India. Singh had also made several communally charged statements in October this year when he blamed the Muslim community solely for 'population explosion' in India
