 "Pratik Sinha, founder of Alt News, in Ahmedabad")
At the Press Club of India meeting called to condemn the raid by the Central Bureau of Investigation on the founders of NDTV, former Union minister and editor Arun Shourie talked about the good work done by fact-checking and fake news busting websites such as Alt News. He even suggested that mainstream papers allot some space to publish the expose done by these portals.
Just a few months old, Alt News has been making waves online by spotting and exposing fake news and other misleading content on social media. It has also embarrassed a few top editors by running an online tutorial on “WhatsApp journalism”. Last week, it caught several media outlets on the wrong foot for claiming that President Ram Nath Kovind’s Twitter handle had got three million followers in a matter of minutes.
“I had followed the transition of the @Potus Twitter account from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. So, I knew it the moment I saw it,” says Pratik Sinha, Ahmedabad-based founder of Alt News.
Sinha, son of late human rights activist Mukul Sinha who had taken up fake encounter cases, says he felt the need to start some platform to document people’s struggle during the Dalit protests in Gujarat last year.
After discussing with his friend, the co-founder of the Facebook page “Unofficial Subra-manian Swamy”, a draft was created with two broad ideas: The first was to create a platform to document people’s struggle and the second, was to expose fake news on social media.
Considering the limited resources at their disposal, the duo decided to go with the second option. A third contributor has since joined. Sinha has not been able to go back to his freelance software engineering work since December, as Alt News went debunking a viral video here, a spurious news story there. Its Twitter handle has more than 21,000 followers including several senior journalists and opinion makers.
“At this point, it is a voluntary effort. If we get funding, we definitely want to take it long term,” says Sinha, adding that he is in the process of setting up a not-for-profit after which there are plans to raise funds from institutions or through crowdfunding.
Funds such as Omidyar have set aside money for investing in this specific area, while even mainstream media houses can see value in weeding out the menace of fake news to protect their readership. Other sites such as BoomLive of the Govindraj Ethiraj-led Ping Network and Pankaj Jain’s SM Hoax Slayer have also grabbed eyeballs for doing similar work.
Critics say investors may be worried that Alt News’ targets are predominantly right-wing portals and personalities associated with the ruling party.
Sinha says this is intended. “Though we are not fans of any political party, the amount of ‘fakery’ coming from the right wing is definitely more.” Pro-government hoaxes have more impact and need to be challenged, he says. Sinha agrees that balance is important and hopes it would be achieved as they expand and add more people.
Whether fake news busting and fact-checking could sustain themselves as a stand-alone business is “a question still up in the air”. Sinha is confident that “fact-checking is here to stay”.
