Lighthouse Journalism came across a cartoon being widely shared on social media. The cartoon featured Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath. The cartoon was attributed to one of the leading daily newspapers, Jansatta. During the investigation we found the claim to be misleading. Jansatta did not carry the cartoon.
Claim:
Facebook user Jharkhand Youth Congress shared the cartoon.
Other users too are sharing the post.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by checking if the cartoon has recently appeared either on the Jansatta website or the print edition of the newspaper. We could not find it. Upon observation it was found that the cartoon was made using NCRB data.
Using the keyword search on the Jansatta website, we then found an article on jansatta.com.
The article written by Ankit Raj was published on December 5, 2023. The article carried the NCRB data in a table format however, it did not carry the widely shared cartoon.
We then reached out to the editor of jansatta.com, Vijay Jha. He informed us that the cartoon was not made or used by Jansatta in any of its articles. Jansatta did carry a report on the NCRB data.
We found out that the cartoon was also shared by a few social media users after the release of NCRB data in the month of December.
We also found the news report regarding the NCRB report 2023 being carried by several other news media organisations.
We found a logo being used on the picture which said, ‘Congress Express’. We ran a reverse image search on the logo and found a YouTube channel.
We found the cartoon shared on this channel.
The X account of this user was temporarily restricted.
Conclusion: Jansatta did not carry the widely shared cartoon featuring PM Narendra Modi and UP CM Yogi Adityanath on UP crime rate. Viral claims are misleading.
