News24 Didn't Apologise to Akhilesh Yadav, Screenshot of Tweet is Photoshopped
The channel also clarified on their official Twitter handle that the viral post was fake.
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The screenshot of a tweet carrying a graphic from a news bulletin from News24 has gone viral. The tweet was shared to claim that the news channel "apologised to Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav for trying to defame his party at the behest of Bharatiya Janata Party".
The graphic in the tweet states that Kanpur businessperson Piyush Jain, who was arrested by central agencies on Sunday, 26 December, for evasion of tax, was a member of the BJP.
However, we spotted several errors in the viral tweet and found that the tweet was fabricated. The channel also clarified on their official Twitter handle that the viral post was fake.
CLAIM
Sharing the viral screenshot a Facebook profile called "Samajwadi ItCell" wrote, "That day isn't far away when BJP will apologise to the nation".
The same caption was used by several other Facebook users.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
To check the claim, we started by conducting a Twitter advanced search on News24's official Twitter handle using keywords like "Akhilesh Yadav", "BJP" etc. However, we could not find any such tweet where the channel had apologised to Yadav.
Upon looking at the screenshot closely, we noticed certain errors in it. For example, the font used for "News 24" was not one that we see being used on Twitter. The text of the tweet and the username were not aligned, like they are supposed to. We compared the viral tweet with a real tweet from the Twitter handle to show the discrepancies.
Comparison of real and viral tweet.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
We also checked a news bulletin on News24's YouTube channel and found that colour scheme in the viral tweet didn't match with the real tweet. The text in the viral video talking about Piyush Jain was in yellow colour while the colour of the graphic in the original bulletin was white.
We also noticed two white spots in the background that gave the impression that some text was superimposed on the original image.
A comparison of the graphics.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
WHO IS PIYUSH JAIN?
Jain was arrested by central agencies for evasion of tax in what is the biggest cash seizure by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC).
Cash worth over Rs 257 crore, gold, and some other valuables were found during raids conducted at a Kanpur house and some other places belonging to Jain. There were reports that Jain has ties with Samajwadi Party and Akhilesh Yadav, but the party has denied the links and claimed that the BJP had arrested their own man.
A news report published in the Navbharat Times said Jain had no ties with any political parties and is just a perfume dealer.
News24, on 26 December, posted a tweet from its official Twitter handle and said that the viral screenshot was "fake".
Evidently, a photoshopped graphic of a News24 bulletin in a tweet was shared by several social media users to claim that the channel had apologised to Akhilesh Yadav.
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