In March 2020, Meta (previously Facebook) announced a partnership with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN, set up in 2015 by US no-profit Poynter Institute) ‘to reduce the spread of misinformation and provide more reliable information to users.’ In an interview with American podcaster Joe Rogan, the founder of Meta platforms Mark Zuckerberg said in August 2022, “…we do not want to be deciding what is true or false… We also didn’t want to be in the business of deciding which fact-checkers are professional and not. So we basically outsource that to this accreditation (referring to IFCN)… it’s widely respected. It is sort of the best that there is, even though it’s, you know, it’s not without flaws…”

In the first week of September 2022, IFCN announced that it had awarded $450,000 in grants to organizations working to lessen the impact of false and misleading information on WhatsApp. Out of 11 award-winning organizations, three were from India. One of them was Vishvas News, which received $50,000 (~40 lakhs). According to the announcement, Vishvas News intended to ‘create a bridge of information between people who are facing a flow of misinformation and have no idea where and how to check for legitimacy.’

Vishvas News is a subsidiary of MMI Online Limited, the digital arm of Jagran Prakashan Ltd, the parent company of ‘Dainik Jagran’ newspaper, which, according to its website, has a daily readership of over 50 million — one of the largest in India. It is worth noting that Bharat Gupta, the CEO of MMI Online Limited, is one of the 11 board members at the IFCN.

This report seeks to analyze if Vishvas News follows IFCN codes of conduct, and document instances of misinformation by its sister concern, Dainik Jagran, between January 2021 and July 2022.

Does Vishvas News follow the IFCN codes of conduct?

The IFCN has five code of conducts with multiple sub-points. The following sub-points in pertinent to this report:

  • Commitment to Standards and Transparency of Methodology
    5.2 The applicant selects claims to check based primarily on the reach and importance of the claims, and where possible explains the reason for choosing the claim to check.
  • Commitment to an Open & Honest Corrections Policy
    6.5 If the applicant is the fact-checking unit of a media company, it is a requirement of signatory status that the parent media company has and adheres to an open and honest corrections policy.

Alt News noticed that Vishvas News rarely mentions primary sources of misinformation such as prominent accounts or news outlets. As a result, it completely ignores the importance of the reach of the social media account making the claim. For example —

Two years ago, Alt News reported that most Facebook fact-checking partners in India had failed to fact-check misinformation shared by pro-BJP users/organizations. Alt News had cited five sources of misinformation that came out on top as per our reports — BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya, BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra, Sudarshan News’ chief Suresh Chavhanke, and OpIndia.

In order to find this data, Alt News performed a domain-specific keyword search on Google. Here, the domain would be the website of the fact-checking portal and the specificHow keyword is the source of misinformation. For example, site:vishvasnews.com “Suresh Chavhanke”.

Data showed that barring BoomLive, The Quint, and Alt News, most fact-checking portals looked the other way when false claims or misinformation were shared by these platforms/individuals. Between August 2019 and August 2020, Vishvas News mentioned only one of them on only one occasion.

This story was originally published in altnews.in. Read the full story here