The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had recently released a bogus report on fake news. In their report, they accused many reputed news media websites and famous personalities of spreading fake news. In their report titled “Beyond Fake News”, BBC concluded that the maximum amount of fake news in India was being circulated in the name of nationalism and PM Modi.
The BBC’s report quickly became a butt of jokes among the sane minded Indians because of its glaring bias, which was evident in its research methodology and data collection. The report was based on the survey analyzing three countries; interviewing 80 odd people in these countries, and out of these 80 people, 40 were from India.
It received massive flak social media for its baseless flapdoodle report, which they have now taken down.
This is the result of massive social media uproar against the report. Many reputed web media portal lambasted BBC for falsely accusing them. Being a leading news and opinion platforms in India this is what we said in our response.
A media portal like The Better India, which is known for featuring positive news about India, is one such website which was accused of spreading fake news by the BBC. It took serious offence to this and wrote to the BBC. In their response, the BBC replied, “We have looked into your concern and found that we made a human error when scanning a wide range of media for our report. The Better India should not have been included and we would like to apologize to you for this mistake.”
In its recent report on fake news, @BBC @BBCIndia falsely accused us of spreading fake news. We wrote to them and here is their response, confirming their mistake citing ‘human error’. We expect a public apology from them for maligning years of our hard work. Please RT. pic.twitter.com/1XNalsXtkw
— The Better India (@thebetterindia) November 17, 2018
The Better India has demanded a public apology from the BBC for maligning its image in public.
Support us. The @BBC @BBCIndia needs to apologise via their official handles, for having falsely accused us of spreading fake news. Please RT. https://t.co/sCfTGa2pHY
— The Better India (@thebetterindia) November 18, 2018
Earlier, opindia.com published an article titled ‘The BBC research on ‘fake news’ is shoddy, unethical, dishonest, and actually an example of fake news’ exposing many serious flaws in the research carried out by the BBC.
The choice of handles which have been labeled by the BBC as purveyor of fake news or those who mostly spread fake news was biased at all the levels. It seems that the BBC’s report was a deliberate attempt to intentionally save the actual alleged news websites, media portals, FB pages and twitter handles whose only work is to spread the fake news and hatred. The things which further cements this doubts is that the BBC had invited social media trolls like Divya Spandana and Ankit Lal in their gathering who frequently peddle questionable information and are abusive on social media. They also invited Dhruv Rathee, a pro-AAP video blogger who has been involved in spreading fake news, as a panelist. Dhruv Rathee got sued for defamation by a software engineer Vikas Pandey. Controversial and failed Bollywood actress, Swara Bhaskar, was also part of their panel. The BBC in their panel discussion “Beyond Fake News” had invited many people who have made their career by spreading fake news and misinformation against the BJP.
1. Unviable position at @BBC organised panel discussion #BeyondFakeNews". Both morning panels filled with BJP bashers who all made the case that BJP alone propogates fake news.None from BJP to defend party position. Merely saying this is partisan view got me branded as BJP
— Madhu Purnima Kishwar (@madhukishwar) November 12, 2018
After this entire episode, the credibility of BBC has suffered a serious setback. Deleting the report is not going to help their case. They should apologize publicly for tarnishing the image of several reputed media portals and leading personalities, and also for misleading the audience with their bogus and biased report.