Authors
Vasudha noticed the growing problem of mis/disinformation online after studying New Media at ACJ in Chennai and became interested in separating facts from fiction. She is interested in learning how global issues affect individuals on a micro level. Before joining Newschecker’s English team, she was working with Latestly.
Claim
AIMIM makes a dent in Bihar’s Seemanchal area by winning 5 seats in the election.
Link to the Facebook post can be found here.
Fact
On carefully analysing the video, we could conclude that the news report was indeed elaborating on the AIMIM’s performance in Bihar elections but this video is two-year-old.
Fist, we spot the logo of India TV in the top right corner of the screen.Taking this as a clue, we conduct a keyword search for India TV Bihar elections & AIMIM on YouTube which leads us to a video uploaded on the official channel of the news outlet on November 10, 2020 titled ‘Bihar Election Results: AIMIM makes a dent in Seemanchal.’
Notably, the description of the YouTube video by India TV reads, “Bihar Assembly Election Results LIVE Updates: Counting of votes for the 243 assembly seats in Bihar is currently underway. After the initial neck-and-neck battle, the ruling NDA is ahead of the opposition’s Grand Alliance – led by Tejashwi Yadav.”
Around 17 seconds into the YouTube video, we spot the viral footage where the news anchor can be seen explaining how Owaisi’s party helped the NDA to retain power in Bihar and shattered RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav aspirations to become the Chief Minister.
We could thus conclude that the viral India TV report on AIMIM making a dent in Seemanchal related to the 2020 Bihar Assembly Elections and is being shared out of context.
But was there any election in Seemanchal region recently ? Or did AIMIM win any seat in the area of late?
To answer these questions we conduct a keyword search for “AIMIM”, “Bihar Elections” & “Seemanchal” on Google. But this does not yield any recent reports, instead it opens up several news articles from November 2020 – elaborating on the 5-seat victory of the Owaisi-led party in assembly polls that year. Such reports can be seen here, here and here.
Following this, we have looked up the official website of the Election Commission and found that the most recent election in Bihar was the by-polls of Gopalganj and Mokama that took place on November 3. The BJP secured victory in Gopalganj while the RJD retained its Mokama seat.
We could thus conclude that the video report by India TV on the AIMIM making a dent in Seemanchal politics is two-year-old and is being shared without context.
Result: Missing Context
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Authors
Vasudha noticed the growing problem of mis/disinformation online after studying New Media at ACJ in Chennai and became interested in separating facts from fiction. She is interested in learning how global issues affect individuals on a micro level. Before joining Newschecker’s English team, she was working with Latestly.
