Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
Claim
Neha Dixit, a journalist who writes for Al Jazeera, Washington Post, The Wire, and The Caravan made an ‘Inane’ tweet to claim that India’s National Broadcaster is streaming ‘Ramayana’ from a Moser Baer DVD along with the watermark.
Apologies for this inane tweet. But Doordarshan, India’s National broadcaster, is streaming Ramayana from a Moser Baer DVD. Along with the watermark. pic.twitter.com/jghqHJCLwd
— Neha Dixit (@nehadixit123) April 11, 2020
An archived version of the same can be viewed here.
Verification
Ever since the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (Ministry of I&B) announced the re-telecasting of the iconic teleserial ‘Ramayana’, it has garnered immense endorsement by social media users. The latest to join the cacophony is Neha Dixit, who writes for several reputed media outlets. Dixit made a tweet and highlighted that the Doordarshan is streaming ‘Ramayana’ from a Moser Baer DVD and the teleserial carries a watermark of Moser Baer. Joining Neha in highlighting the same, former media advisor of the Delhi Government, Nagendar Sharma went a step further and accused the National Broadcaster of endorsing Moser Baer.
One gets to hear that Doordarshan’s invaluable archival footage is available with ANI and Doordarshan pays to ANI to get the footage for which it alone has copyright. In comparison, passive publicity to Moserbaer can be forgiven. https://t.co/G7VRuVUmXH
— Nagendar Sharma (@sharmanagendar) April 11, 2020
An archived version of the same can be viewed here.
Neha, when corrected by an NDTV journalist namely ‘Akhilesh Sharma’ claimed that she was watching the teleserial on the official DD National Live streaming channel on YouTube and since the telecast was over, she expressed her inability to produce a link of the same to back her claim.
Nagendra and Akhilesh, I was watching it on the official DD National Live streaming channel on YouTube. The telecast is over so unable to share the link.
— Neha Dixit (@nehadixit123) April 11, 2020
As we searched further to collect more information on the issue, we found a tweet made by the Chief Executive Officer of Prasar Bharati in which he rubbishes the claim made by Neha Dixit and also advises her to check her sources. The same was also retweeted by the official handle of Doordarshan National.
This does not seem to be from Doordarshan please re-check your source. https://t.co/pstyNCGQbv
— Shashi Shekhar (@shashidigital) April 11, 2020
Neha, besides being corrected by the CEO of Prasar Bharati, seems to adhere to her views as she has not deleted her tweet yet and it can be seen on her timeline and so does Nagendar Sharma as he also neither deleted the tweet nor posted any clarification.
We also checked the official website of Prasar Bharati and Doordarshan National along with the YouTube channels of both Prasar Bharati and Doordarshan National but we couldn’t find any video footage of Ramayana.
However, when we checked the official handle of Doordarshan National, we found several tweets that contain the videos and the stills from the teleserial but we couldn’t find the watermark of ‘Moser Baer’ in any of these tweets.
सुबह 9 बजे देखना ना भूलें रामानंद सागर की ‘रामायण’ सिर्फ @DDNational पर।#Ramayan pic.twitter.com/RjKS75ius8
— Doordarshan National (@DDNational) April 11, 2020
#Ramayan on your favourite channel @DDNational NOW pic.twitter.com/PCAbDStdLx
— Doordarshan National (@DDNational) April 4, 2020
Watch #Ramayan on @DDNational NOW pic.twitter.com/8LZ5jRQp48
— Doordarshan National (@DDNational) April 11, 2020
WATCH NOW –#Ramayan on @DDNational pic.twitter.com/4IDWVxAHmu
— Doordarshan National (@DDNational) April 11, 2020
More such tweets can be viewed here.
We also found several tweets containing the recorded footage of the teleserial which were retweeted by the official Twitter handle of Prasar Bharati as well. Notably, all the tweets containing the footage or stills of the teleserial carry a logo of Doordarshan National. We checked all such tweets but we could not find the watermark of ‘Moser Baer’ in any of the tweets.
More such stills and footage can be viewed on the official Instagram account of Doordarshan National.
Now, as we searched YouTube with the keyword ‘Ramayana on Doordarshan’, we noticed that multiple publishers have uploaded videos of Ramayana. In one of the search results, we found a video that publishes the same videos as of Doordarshan National with the Moser Baer logo. Notably, the publisher uploads in the same exact pattern as Doordarshan National does ie the episode aired by the Doordarshan National on April 7 from 9 am to 10 am can be found there with the title ‘Ramayan today Episode DD National | Ramayan Today Episode 7 April 2020 (Morning) | Ramanand Sagar liv’.
Notably, videos uploaded by the publisher mentioned-above carry the watermark of ‘Moser Baer’.
We also searched for the legal documentation between Moser Baer and Government of India regarding the DVD rights of Ramayana but we didn’t get any authentic information to corroborate.
Hence, it is evident from our fact-check that the episodes of Ramayana telecasted by Doordarshan National do not carry the watermark of ‘Moser Baer’.
Sources
Google Search
Twitter Advanced Search
Result: False
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Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
