TC Web Desk
Adding to the growing list of fake news channels that are thriving on YouTube, the government has banned six more such channels on January 12. The most recent addition includes six channels. The banned channels commanded a massive subscriber base of more than 20 lakh that generated more than 513 million page views, according to a statement issued by the Press Information Bureau’s Fact Checking Unit under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
“The YouTube channels exposed by the PIB Fact Check unit spread fake news about the elections, proceedings in the Supreme Court and Parliament of India, functioning of the Government of India, etc. Examples include false claims regarding ban on Electronic Voting Machines, and false statements attributed to senior Constitutional functionaries including the President of India, Chief Justice of India, among others.
“The channels are part of a fake news economy that thrives on monetisation. The channels use fake, clickbait and sensational thumbnails and images of television news anchors of TV Channels to mislead the viewers to believe that the news was authentic and drive traffic to their channels in order to monetize the videos published by them,” said the statement.
PIB Fact Check has put out detailed Twitter threads of the exposing the alleged fake news racket of the six YouTube channels.
Nation TV
Subscribers: 5.57 lakh
Views: 21.01 million
A #YouTube channel ‘Nation Tv’ with over 550K subscribers & over 21 crore views has been found to be propagating #FakeNews about the President, Union Ministers & the Election Commission of India.
#PIBFactCheck found almost all of its content to be fake.Here’s a thread… pic.twitter.com/GjyJo9xHme
— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) January 12, 2023
Samvad TV
Subscribers: 10.9 lakh
Views: 17.3 million
A #YouTube channel ‘Samvaad TV’ with over 10 lakh subscribers was found to be propagating #FakeNews about the Government of India and making false claims about the statements of the Union Ministers. @PIBFactCheck
found almost all of its content to be fake.Here’s a thread👇 pic.twitter.com/MQxsMF7CeI
— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) January 12, 2023
Sarokar Bharat
Subscribers: 21,1oo
Views: 4.5 million
A #YouTube channel ‘Sarokar Bharat’ with 21,100 subscribers and over 37 lakh views have been found to be propagating #FakeNews regarding the President of India, Prime Minister, and several other Union Ministers. pic.twitter.com/ynUuBkmm19
— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) January 12, 2023
Nation 24
Subscribers: 25,400
Views: 4.3 million
A #YouTube channel ‘Nation 24’ with more than 25.4K subscribers and close to 44 lakh views has been found to be propagating #FakeNews about the President, Prime Minister, Supreme Court of India and the Election Commission of India@PIBFactCheck busts some of its claims🔽 pic.twitter.com/J9i3bBkqlw
— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) January 12, 2023
Swarnim Bharat
Subscribers: 6070
Views: 1.0 million
A YouTube channel ‘Swarnim Bharat’ with over 1,013,013 views has been found to be propagating #FakeNews about the Prime Minister, Union Ministers, Election Commission of India & Supreme Court of India. @PIBFactCheck found almost all of its content to be fake. Here’s a thread.. pic.twitter.com/tyNzsK7DbT
— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) January 12, 2023
Samvaad Samachar
Subscribers: 3.48 lakh
Views: 11.93 million
YouTube channel ‘Samvaad Samachar’ with about 3.5 lakh subscribers & over 12 crore views has been found to be propagating #FakeNews about the President, Prime Minister, various Cabinet Ministers & Chief Justice of India.
In this thread #PIBFactCheck busts some of its claims🔽 pic.twitter.com/SGU0c6RcVB
— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) January 12, 2023
These channels have been banned since PIB’s scrutiny. In April last year, the PIB Fact Check Unit blacklisted 22 YouTube channels for spreading fake news.
While fake news has become a part of the digital information ecosystem, experts have warned of exercising caution from letting fact checking become a censorship tool in the hands of the government to suppress adverse reporting.
