Meet the fake news fighter

Here’s how engineer-turned-fact checker Pratik Sinha fights the never-ending battle of misinformation on social media..

Transcript

00:00We're happy that the recognition has come in whatever form it was.

00:16I am Pradeep Sinha, and I'm the co-founder and editor of Alt News.

00:24If we can hire Time Magazine to do PR exercise for Alt News then, you know, yeah, we have

00:29actually sort of reached our financial goals, which I know we haven't.

00:35Sometimes we are just shocked that we have to fact-check certain things, you know.

00:55It is farmers protests, CNRC, Russia-Ukraine conflict, Balakot, everything, every narrative

01:02is controlled, and we come and bust some of those narratives.

01:06But we are used to the trolling, I mean, we get trolled every day of our lives, so that

01:12is not new.

01:13In fact, to a certain extent, the more the trolling, at some level, it is satisfactory.

01:23When everybody goes to town and says that the Prime Minister faltered at the teleprompter,

01:27irrespective of how I think of him as an individual, we were the first to put out a story that

01:33no, there was somebody behind who was prompting him.

01:37Someone from the admin, his admin team prompted him and asked him, he can you check whether

01:43the other side can hear you properly?

01:44And that's why he stopped, not because, you know, he faltered at the teleprompter stop.

01:53If one goes and reads Zubair's tweet, number one, it is not a manipulated video.

02:07I had put a thread the following day stating how it is exactly the same clip that was put

02:12on.

02:13Number one, there was no manipulation, okay.

02:17Number two, what did Zubair say, that how is the host letting such a conversation happen

02:24without controlling the conversation?

02:26Why is such a conversation happening on mainstream media at all?

02:30Zubair did not produce that content, Zubair only posted what he created.

02:35And as a media critic, he has every right to do that.

02:37Now it is not Zubair's fault that the video went viral and then whatever repercussions

02:47that Anupam Sharma had to face as a person, it is not right what she has had to face.

02:53It is *** responsibility, but people did not question ***, people questioned Zubair.

02:59When an organization like *** has a fact-checking app, then it looks good, you know, it becomes

03:10a PR point that, hey, we are fact-checking.

03:13But have they ever fact-checked their own stories?

03:14The answer is no, you know, *** was the organization which said that there was no rape in Kathura.

03:23*** increasingly has put out a lot of information which has been proven to be false.

03:37People do not have the relevant education which would let them survive in this time

03:45and era where there's information being bombarded from every direction.

03:50How do you process so much information?

03:52How do you figure out what is authentic, what is inauthentic?

03:55You can reach anybody from Kashmir to Kanyakumari within a matter of seconds.

04:00So realization that how powerful the tool this is, political propaganda, you can do

04:06it 24 by 7.

04:07You do not have to wait for an election.

04:13The more amount of time you spend on a social media platform, the more money they make because

04:19the more advertisements you see, the more time you spend.