A fake listicle by ‘BBC News Hub’ was tweeted by Mohandas Pai and Vivek Agnihotri, and was widely retweeted within hours.
New Delhi: A ‘news listicle’ about the top 10 most corrupt political parties in the world is being widely shared on Twitter claiming that the Congress is second on the list.
On Monday, the list was tweeted by T.V. Mohandas Pai, chairman of Aarin Capital and a trustee of Akshay Patra Foundation. Filmmaker Vivek Agnhotri also tweeted the link, but deleted it later.
https://twitter.com/TVMohandasPai/status/1041512039049519104
The link Pai and Agnihotri shared bore BBC’s name that made it look authentic. However, bbcnewshub.com, the website which hosted the listicle, has no connection with the BBC. Also, there are serious doubts over its credibility.
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The same website had earlier created a listicle of the 10 ‘most corrupt politicians’ in the world for 2018 in which it included Prime Minister Narendra Modi at seventh position.
In March 2017, the same website had produced a listicle declaring Congress as the fourth most corrupt political party in the world, only to replace it with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) later in August.
Last year, SM Hoaxslayer reported that the website didn’t provide any methodology, data or criteria for its list, and is most likely fake.
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Geeta Pandey, BBC Online’s Editor, India and Women affairs, even debunked the fake news website last year and said the premier news organisation never conducts such surveys.
This is so fake @BBCNews @bbcindia @bbcnewsasia never does such surveys https://t.co/fNmzTpWPb9 via @postcard_news
— GeetaPandeyBBC (@geetapandeyBBC) March 20, 2017
On Monday, some Twitter users pointed out to Pai that the news website was fake. Television anchor and political analyst Sumanth Raman said the website that created the listicle is not authentic. To this, Pai responded, “Good you have clarified this! We do not want any Indian entity to be on any such list.”
However, Pai didn’t delete his tweet.
In collaboration with SM Hoaxslayer.