Media Organisations Fall For Hoax Post on Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s Death

Sen's daughter and actor Nandana clarified on her X account mentioning that her father is "totally fine."

Abhishek Anand
WebQoof
Published:
<div class="paragraphs"><p>Fact-Check | The news reports about Amartya Sen's death is fake.&nbsp;</p></div>
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Fact-Check | The news reports about Amartya Sen's death is fake. 

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

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Several images of Nobel laureate and renowned economist Amartya Sen went viral on the internet with a claim that he passed away at the age of 89.

Who all shared the claim?: Media organisations such as Times of India, Zee News, First Post, Business Today, and Deccan Chronicle shared the news.

(Swipe right to view all claims.)

What is the truth?: Sen's daughter and actor Nandana Sen posted a clarification on her official X account stating that the news about her father's death is "fake".

  • Moreover, the account running in the name of 'Claudia Goldin' is a hoax account created by Italian “journalist“ Tommasso Debenedetti.

How did we find out?:

  • The account that first posted about Sen's death had earlier posted about the Nobel prize win while making a typo.

  • The post read, “Very hapoy to announce that I won the Nobel Prize in Economics for 2023. Thanks!!! (sic)”

(Screenshot: X/Screenshot)

  • While going through the comments, we found people mentioning that Goldin’s original account was called @PikaGoldin, which has been active since 2013 and links back to her Harvard profile. 

  • The other account, on the other hand, was created in May 2023. 

  • We checked the X account that shared the news and found a subsequent post that said that "this account is hoax created by Italian journalist Tommaso Debenedetti. (sic)"

  • For the unversed, the said journalist is a serial fake news peddler who creates imposter accounts of famous people or organisations and then posts the news about a person's death.

  • In the past, Debenedetti has posted posts about the death of Kazuo Ishiguro, the pope, and Fidel Castro.

  • In a report published in 2012, The Guardian called Debenedetti "one of the world's most creative and successful fake tweeters."

The report was published on 30 March 2012.

(Source: The Guardian/Screenshot)

  • The Washington Post, too, published a report in 2017 on how people and news organisations picked up hoaxes shared by Debenedetti as real.

Sen's daughter clarifies: Actor Nandana Sen shared a post on her official X account mentioning that her father is "totally fine." She said that both of them spent a week together with family in Cambridge.

Conclusion: It is clear that the news about Amartya Sen's death is fake and is based on a hoax post shared by a serial fake news peddler.

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