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✔ Fact-Checking Isn’t Only About Tools. There’s More.
Hi, we hope you are doing well and keeping dry wherever you are. 🌧️🌧️🌧️
We are glad to bring you another edition of ✅ Verified by BOOM - a newsletter that brings you all things verified and news that matters.
👋 I'm Divya Chandra, BOOM's resident fact-checker & producer of this weekly newsletter. There is a general perception that fact-checking is all about tools, deep research, investigation skills and so on. Although the process of debunking misinformation does involve all of these skills, there's more to it than meets the eye.
Let's find out!
💡
The answer:
Your observation skills!
Online fact-checking tools help you to an extent. A lot of times, you don't get relevant search results using the tools (Yes, the struggle is real!).
But that does not mean you can't debunk the viral image/video in question at all.
✔️ Pause and look at the visuals carefully
. See if you can find some relevant signboards, structure of buildings, famous/ known monuments, number plates of vehicles (if any), names of streets and shops.
✔️
If you see police officials in the visual, the
insignia on their uniforms
can give you a hint of which state police they're posted with.
✔️
If it's a video, pause and play the video several times to see if you can get a hint from the audio. Basically,
the language/ dialect that people are speaking in
.
✔️
See what is happening in the video and try making sense of it. This will help you in conducting relevant
keyword searches
on platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
✔️
When you're searching on these platforms,
go local!
You don't always have to use English keywords. You can search in Hindi, regional languages and foreign languages.(Tip: Use Google Translate) As you can see, no tool is going to help you with the aforementioned things, it's all about how much you can observe!
To know more, you can read this fact-check by BOOM wherein we looked at the viral image carefully to get our first clue. The image shows a group of people sitting at a table and was being shared with the false claim that it shows Supreme Court judges Surya Kant and JB Pardiwala sharing a meal with NDTV founders Prannoy and Radhika Roy, along with Communist Party of India leader Brinda Karat.
🔖
Read our fact-check
:
🔖 Moving on, 28-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning Kashmiri photojournalist – Sanna Irshad Mattoo was stopped by immigration officials on 2 June at New Delhi Airport from flying to Paris. She said she was not given any reason and shared photos of her tickets and passport stamped with "Cancelled without prejudice" by the immigration officials on Twitter.
But, what does 'cancellation without prejudice' mean and who can be stopped from travelling abroad? Find the answers in this explainer by BOOM.
🔖 There is never a dull period in the fact-checking space with misinformation being shared on a daily basis and fact-checkers working round the clock to debunk it. But where does the buck stop?
🤔Think.
The last week witnessed an old image of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde meeting Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar being revived as a recent image.
🔖 Further, a photo showing National Democratic Alliance's (NDA) presidential candidate Draupadi Murmu alongside Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat went viral, however, we found that it's a morphed one.
🚀 We have launched a podcast called
wherein three hosts- HR Venkatesh, Archis Chowdhury and I will tackle words from a single letter (such as A for Appropriation, Allyship, Authenticity, Algorithm, etc) to help you navigate tricky, polarising questions with your friends, family and community.
🤔 We have been rigorously conducting LIVE workshops on busting fake news and telling you how to consume media. We have launched a hands-on fact-checking workshop in Hindi that will be conducted on
22 July at 6 PM.
If you have suggestions about this newsletter or want us to conduct workshops on specific topics, drop us a line at 👉
and we will get back to you in a jiffy.
Thanks for reading. See you next Saturday 👋