Answering queries on welfare schemes is bulk of govt fact-check unit's work

Queries on government jobs or recruitment examinations also on the minds of people

Meta on Wednesday apologised for chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's remarks that the Indian government had lost power in the 2024 elections, saying his remarks were an "inadvertent error". The social media giant responded after Ashwini Vaishnaw, IT and Information and Broadcasting Minister, wrote on X to correct Zuckerberg and asked him to "uphold facts".

 

As the controversy settles down, note that the Press Information Bureau (PIB), which comes under the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, runs its own fact-checking unit (FCU) to verify queries people put to it. It checks information on its own, too. A review of FCU's work gives a broad gauge of the kind of information Indians seek and the variety of misinformation they are exposed to.

 

The FCU checked 583 pieces of information in 2024 compared to 394 in 2020, the first full year of its operations.       When it first started work in December 2019, it took up 19 pieces of information. Of the 15 articles that the FCU posted in the public domain for 2019, five related to economic and financial reports, including currency notes and freebies or services in lieu of money, lucky draws or awards the government, public sector units or the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) were supposedly offering. One article pertained to a query over reports that the Prime Minister had approved changes in civil services recruitment exams conducted by the Union Public Service Commission. The information was fake.

 

As the years progressed, the number of queries about economic and financial reports, mostly about various government welfare schemes, crossed 100 in 2023 and stayed above that mark till 2024. In 2024, such queries formed 36 per cent of FCU's entire work.

 

Queries related to reports about government jobs or recruitment examinations were also on the minds of the people. While there was only one such query in December 2019, it rose to 41 and comprised more than 12 per cent of total queries next year. However, the number and share in total fact-checks declined after that.

 

While there were no queries about health in 2019, such numbers rose to 78 and 86 in the next two years as Covid-19 spread in India. In fact, the FCU did the highest number of fact-checks in 2021 when the second wave of Covid-19 hit the country. Health-related queries dropped in the next three years, but as late as September 6, 2024 people were asking the FCU about reports of lockdowns to contain the pandemic. Such reports were found to be misleading.  

 

Most public queries on economic and financial reports relate to freebies, including unemployment allowance or services in lieu of money purportedly offered by the government, PSUs or RBI. Most of these are found to be misleading by the FCU.