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- What’s in a Click: Fact-Checkers’ POV
What’s in a Click: Fact-Checkers’ POV
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From AI-generated predators in urban neighbourhoods to political spin surrounding national tragedies, 2025 was yet another year when truth became a scavenger hunt.
In this special edition, I asked six fact-checkers in BOOM to step out from behind their laptops and share the one story that stayed with them. These aren't just debunks; they are personal accounts of the exhaustion, the investigations, and the high stakes of a world where a single click can trigger a city-wide panic.
1. The Boy Who Cried (AI) Leopard
The Incident: AI-generated leopard sightings in Lucknow.
"I first saw the clips on social media: a boy being scolded by police and later admitting from the back of a police van that he’d used AI tools to create leopard images. It piqued my curiosity, but the scale of the impact didn't hit me until I spoke with District Forest Officer Sitanshu Pandey.
He revealed that six or seven different 'leopard' images circulating in Lucknow’s Ruchi Khand were total hoaxes. These fake images kept forest teams awake all night, drained government resources, and paralysed a neighbourhood with fear. It was a wake-up call. We are now in an era where AI technology is so accessible that a prank can cause a public safety crisis. It’s no longer just about 'fake news'; it’s about the urgent need for a massive public shift in how we verify digital content before hitting share,” Shefali Srivastava tells me.
2. The Systematic Failure
The Incident: A cybercrime victim trapped in a website glitch.
In August 2025, a Reddit thread led Swasti Chatterjee to a woman in Kolkata whose private videos were leaked after she left her phone at a repair shop. But the 'viral' part of this story wasn't just the video—it was the systemic failure that followed.
When she tried to use the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, the system erroneously directed her to a police station in Chhattisgarh, hundreds of miles away from where the crime occurred.
“While investigating, I actually located the footage on porn sites and corroborated it with an Instagram user who had first alerted her. Speaking with her revealed the terrifying speed at which her privacy was dismantled across WhatsApp groups and platforms. This story stays with me because it exposes a dark irony: while technology makes it easier than ever to commit a crime, our official 'solutions' are often too clunky and broken to help the victims," Swasti tells me.
3. Fact-Checking ‘Experts’
The Incident: Misleading data narratives from academic institutions.
Archis Chowdhury fact-checked two studies—one by Tata Institute Of Social Sciences (TISS) and the other by Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU)—released ahead of key polls in Delhi and Maharashtra. Both studies surveyed only undocumented migrants in high-density migrant areas and generalised their findings for the entire city's population. No data or evidence shown to support the assumption that the selected areas have a high density of undocumented migrants.
"There’s a long-standing myth that misinformation is a byproduct of the 'uninformed.' This year broke that rule for me. Seeing biased, coordinated narratives emerge from institutions like TISS and JNU was a profound shock. It’s one thing to debunk a random meme; it’s another to fact-check the 'experts.' To debunk it, I had to stop looking at the headlines and start digging into the actual 'data'. I found myself fact-checking footnotes and methodology...like I was grading a really bad paper,” he shares.
4. When Authentic Footage is Misinterpreted
The Incident: Home Minister Amit Shah’s misinterpreted speech on the Indus Water Treaty.
One fact-check that stayed with Anmol Alphonso was a 13-second clip of Home Minister Amit Shah in the Lok Sabha.
“The video went viral in July 2025 with the claim: that Shah said Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel opposed the 1960 Indus Water Treaty—despite Patel having passed away in 1950.
What made this memorable was that the footage wasn’t doctored, clipped, or AI-generated. It was authentic. The missing piece only emerged when we slowed down the audio and heard an unidentified MP interrupt Shah by invoking Patel. Shah’s reference was a response to that interjection, not part of his remarks on the treaty. This story stays with me because it shows how misinformation can thrive even without visual manipulation. Sometimes all it takes is viewers not listening closely enough, and bad actors amplifying claims stripped of context,” he adds.
5. That One Phone Call
The Incident: Claims of a "publicity stunt" involving a fake plaster on a Delhi blast victim.
Following the Delhi blast, a photo of an injured patient went viral with the claim that he was faking his injuries by sporting a plaster on his left hand during PM Modi’s visit to LNJP hospital to meet the injured.
What made this particularly viral was this claim originated from a senior Aam Aadmi Party leader, Saurabh Bhardwaj.
Rohit Kumar immediately contacted many of his reporter colleagues to debunk the claim but they told him that journalists are not being allowed to go inside the hospital.
“Next, I tried to contact the concerned officials of the hospital and the government’s information department but didn’t receive any response. Finally, with the help of a reporter friend, I spoke directly to Mohammad Shahnawaz, who was injured in the incident, and his wife Bushra. Who, while explaining the sequence of events to me, refuted this fake claim and the timeline mentioned in media reports also confirmed this. While working on this story, I realised that between the barricading dividing the inside and outside of the hospital, sometimes just one right phone call is enough to debunk fake news that has already spread millions of kilometers away on social media,” he adds.
6. The "Exclusive" That Wasn't
The Incident: Mainstream media using old images to show Pahalgam terror attack.
"During the non-stop coverage of the Pahalgam terror attack, several mainstream news channels aired a photo of a 'captured terrorist,' claiming it was an exclusive from their ground reporters. Something felt off.
The first clue came from an Indian Express report mentioning that the attackers wore camouflage; the person in the viral visuals did not match that description. Using advanced search techniques, we eventually found the source: the image was actually from a video uploaded in 2021 or earlier. It wasn’t a 'ground exclusive'—it was old footage repurposed on the internet,” Srijit Das tells me.
Sidebar: The Fact-Checker’s Toolkit
How to spot red flags before you share:
The AI Check: When viewing viral photos of local events (like the Lucknow leopard), look for inconsistencies in lighting or warped backgrounds. If a photo looks too dramatic to be true, it likely isn’t.
Trace the "Exclusive": If a news channel claims a "ground exclusive" on a breaking tragedy, cross-reference it. Are other reputable outlets showing the same person? Use Google Lens, Yandex or any other Reverse Image Search engine to see if that "new" photo existed online years ago.
The Source of the Source: Misinformation has moved into the "Expert" space. Don't just trust a headline because it mentions a university. Look for the actual data or the methodology—if it’s missing, be wary.
It’s Okay to Wait: Before sharing a post that makes you feel intense anger or fear, hit pause. Misinformation thrives on your emotional "fight or flight" response.
Look for the Primary Source: As seen in the Delhi blast story, official statements can be slow. Look for reporting that quotes direct eyewitnesses or family members rather than "sources say."
🅱️ RECOMMENDS
This week's recommendation is: Why it’s so hard to tell if a piece of text was written by AI – even for AI
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Verified By Boom is written by Divya Chandra, edited by Adrija Bose and designed by H Shiva Roy Chowdhury.
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