India’s fake-news buster exposes social media rumours involving Gulf News
Alt News denounced rumours that Gulf News called Congress party leader Gandhi 'Pappu'
Dubai: India’s prominent fake-news busting website Alt News on Wednesday denounced social media rumours that Gulf News called Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi 'Pappu’.
Misleading images of the front page of Gulf News’ January 9th edition was widely circulated on social media, wrongly claiming that the newspaper “published Rahul Gandhi’s image as Pappu”.
On January 9th, Gulf News published an exclusive interview of Gandhi ahead of his three-day maiden visit to the UAE from January 10 to January 12. The newspaper had published a caricature of Gandhi to promote the interview on its front page. An image of the front page with a text “How Papu Label’ was tweeted and circulated on facebook by many.
On Wednesday, Alt News, a popular portal run by Pratik Sinha published an article with a headline ‘No, Gulf News did not publish an article calling Rahul Gandhi “Pappu”’.
“We accessed the PDF version of the Gulf News newspaper, a Dubai-based English daily, published on January 9. The narrative that Gulf News was mocking Rahul Gandhi with a caricature and calling him ‘Pappu’ is false. The caption affixed with the caricature reads, “HOW PAPPU LABEL HAS CHANGED RAHUL”, the article said on Wednesday.