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Hey there! 👋

This week, we're diving 🤿 into climate misinformation. Just like health misinformation, climate affects every single one of us.

In the fact-checking world, we're keeping busy ⏰ debunking misinformation about wrestler protests in Delhi, clashes in Manipur, and lots more.

🔖 Last weekend, I conducted a hands-on fact-checking training for journalists reporting on climate and environment as a part of the climate data journalism workshop in Delhi organised by IndiaSpend and Azim Premji University. 

"Yeh May hai"?

"Wow! Rains in May? This is feeling like a hill station"

These are the conversations overheard in Delhi these days. It's interesting how not all of us are experts in understanding weather/ climate related issues, yet it remains one of the usual conversation points no matter whom you're talking to. 

When it comes to climate misinformation, we see a lot of claims regarding why a particular phenomenon is happening, who is responsible for 'new changes' in a particular area' climate. While these claims can be better debunked/ explained by domain experts, however, we also see a lot of after-effect visuals once it's rained or some weather change has been observed in a region. 

A lot of times, the same flood video gets shared multiple times and each time it's claimed to be from a different city. 👉 For example, this is a screengrab of video from Mexico airport but sometimes it's claimed to be from Chennai airport, Mumbai airport, and so on. 

Meanwhile, after attending several workshops as a part of the climate data journalism workshops, I have noticed that journalists covering climate change and environment often point out the lack of credible and timely data. 

🤥 Misinformation This Week

BOOM did a total of 15 fact-checks this week. The unique claims included 10 videos, 1 text, and 4 images. 33% of the false claims are political in nature, followed by communal (27%), and scripted content (13%).

Read our Twitter thread to know the detailed analysis by Debraj Sarkar.

📺 A 21-Year-Old’s Life In Jeopardy After TV Channel Calls Him ‘Shooter’ 

🔖 On 23 March, Times Now NavBharat, a Hindi news channel, aired a video in its prime time show "News ka Pathshala" showing a man walking with Atiq Ahmed’s wife, Shaista Parveen, who is also one of the accused in Umesh Pal’s murder. The channel claimed that the man in the video is one of the alleged killers of Umesh Pal. 

The channel identified him as Arman, one of the 10 accused in Pal’s murder. 

Turns out, the man in the video is a 21-year-old college student and a budding singer who has no relation with Atiq Ahmed’s family. Read this report by Meer Faisal.

Read More

🤖 'Quite Scary': Godfather Of AI Warns About Its Powers As He Quits Google 

🔖 Dr Geoffrey Hinton, the man widely regarded as the godfather of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has left Google, as reported by The New York Times. As the artificial intelligence pioneer left Google, he expressed concerns about the flood of fake information, videos, and images on the internet, as well as the potential for AI to disrupt the employment market.

Read this explainer by BOOM's Hera Rizwan detailing Hinton's concerns. 

Read More

🚫 Fake News You Almost Fell For

🔍 A clipped interview of national-level wrestler Sakshee Malikkh was shared on social media misidentifying her as wrestler Vinesh Phogat crediting Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Saran Singh for winning a gold medal. Read this fact-check to know how 

🔗Srijit Das↗️ debunked the claim.

🔍 Several social media users shared a doctored image of Adolf Hitler standing next to a group of children with barbed wire in between, alongside a recent image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi posts interacting with children across a barbed-wire fence. The posts were shared with a caption that purportedly compared the two leaders on their manner of interacting with children. Read 🔗Archis Chowdhury's↗️ fact-check to find out the truth. 

🔍 The makers of the movie 'The Kerala Story' have claimed that 32,000 women in Kerala belonging to the Hindu and Christian communities have disappeared and have been trafficked to places such as Syria and Afghanistan to be sold as sex slaves to terrorist outfits such as ISIS over the last ten years. But, does any government data support this claim? Read BOOM's 🔗fact-check↗️ to find out.

🔍 An old video showing two persons firing tracer rounds from their high-tech weapons into the darkness of the night was linked to the ongoing clashes in the North Eastern state of Manipur. But, what's the truth? Read this fact-check by 🔗Srijit Das↗️.

🅱️ Recommends

📖 This week's recommendation is: All the News that’s Fit to fabricate: AI-generated Text as a tool of Media Misinformation by Sarah Kreps, R. Miles McCain, and Miles Brundage

The object of this study is mainly twofold; to study peoples’ perception of AI-generated text (made to resemble journalistic coverage of issues) in comparison to ones written by journalists, and to ascertain the impact of the former on the user’s partisan associations.

Read More

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Verified By Boom is written by Divya Chandra, edited by Adrija Bose

and designed by H Shiva Roy Chowdhury.

If you have suggestions about this newsletter or want us to conduct workshops on specific topics, drop us a line at 👉 [email protected] and we will get back to you in a jiffy. Thanks for reading. See you next week.👋

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