PTI: Multiple social media users shared posts, quoting a purported article by the New York Times, that praised India and its elections. In its investigation, the PTI Fact Check Desk found that the text shared as NYT article was in fact a comment on an article published by the organisation in 2009. This comment was shared as NYT article on social media with misleading claims.
Claim:
A Facebook user shared on May 6 a post quoting a purported article by the New York Times, that praised India and its elections. The text (quoted as NYT article) was credited to one ‘V Mitchell’.
Check the archive link of the post.
Investigation:
Starting the investigation, the Desk searched social media platforms with relevant keywords and found that several users had shared the same claim.
Three such Facebook posts can be viewed here, here and here and archive links can be viewed here, here and here respectively.
We also found an X post by former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, who shared the same text, claiming it was an article published by the NYT.
Here is the link and archive link to the post, and below is a screenshot of the same:
The Desk noticed one of the comments on the posts which mentioned that the article was not by ‘V Mitchell’ in New York Times, rather it was a comment on an article published in 2009.
Here is a screenshot of the comment:
Taking a cue from this, the Desk conducted a customised Google search and came across an article published by The New York Times on April 14, 2009, written by Somini Sengupta.
The title of the report read: “As Elections Near, Tightrope Awaits in India”
Here is the link of the article:
We read the article, and found that it had a lot of grammatical errors and did not include any part of the text that was shared on social media in the name of NYT article. However, on scanning the comment section of the post, we came across a comment with the same text as shared recently.
Here is the link to the comment and below is a screenshot of the same:
In the next part of the investigation, the Desk conducted a customised keyword search on the NYT website and in Google to know whether anyone with the name of V Mitchell has ever written any article or opinion piece on this website but we didn’t find anything with the name of ‘V Mitchell’ either on NYT website or in Google search. This showed the name used in the viral social media post as the author is misleading and he just wrote a comment on an article, not the entire article as author.
Subsequently, the Desk concluded that a user comment was falsely claimed as an article by New York Times and shared on social media with misleading claims.
Conclusion: Several social media users shared a piece of writing and claimed it was an article published by New York Times, praising India and its elections. In its investigation, the Desk found that the text was actually a user comment on an NYT article published in 2009, which was shared on social media with misleading claims.
(This story was originally published by PTI Fact Check, and republished by Lighthouse Journalism as a part of the Shakti Collective)
