Last night, Republic TV hosted a debate called “Lynchings A Wake Up Call For All Parties?” during its show The Debate With Arnab Goswami. Using #FakeNewsCanKill, the show set out to discuss how fake news and rumour mongering had led to the lynching of two young men, Nilotpal Das and Abjijeet Nath, in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district.
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ContributeHowever, comments by one panellist, in particular, caught the attention of Twitter users, including journalists. This was Postcard News’s Aishwarya talking about fake news leading to lynching.
The reason is that Postcard News itself is known was generating and spreading fake news. In a piece on May 27, 2017, AltNews had called out the website for “mass producing fake news”. It had also compiled a list of “absolutely fake” articles authored by Postcard News.
Earlier, in March this year, Bengaluru Police had arrested Mahesh Vikram Hegde, founder of Postcard News, for publishing a story that was found to be fake.
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