Has this Media Source failed a fact check? LET US KNOW HERE .

LEFT BIAS

These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage liberal causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy. See all Left Bias sources. Overall, we rate Alt News Left Biased based on story (fact check) selection that favors the Left and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information and a clean fact check record, as well as being referenced by IFCN fact checkers.

Detailed Report

Factual Reporting: HIGH

Country: India

World Press Freedom Rank: India 140/180

History

Founded in 2017, Alt News is a fact checking website from India. The co-founder is Pratik Sinha and the other founder is not known. According to their about page, Alt News is “committed to debunking misinformation, disinformation and mal-information.” Alt News will provide readers “political fact checking, debunking social media rumors and Mainstream media misinformation and bias.” Further, according to a bio of Pratik Sinha, he is a software engineer and member of Jan Sangharsh Manch, a civil liberties organization based in Ahmedabad.

Read our report on how media is influenced by Government in India.

Funded by / Ownership

According to their Editorial Team page, Pratik Sinha is the co-founder and editor of Alt News that operates under the aegis of Pravda Media Foundation. AltNews.in is funded through donations and grants. They also provide a Transparency of Funding page.

Analysis / Bias

Alt News provides a methodology that explains how they fact check and the methods they employ. According to First Post, Alt News describes its purpose as to “act as an antidote to the right-wing propagandists that have established themselves in the mainstream media”.

In review, Alt News primarily fact checks video’s to see if they are real and properly labeled to the source. In general, they fact check claims that would appeal most to those who lean left and are critical of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi’s right wing party). For the most part the main purpose of this site is to refute claims made in social media that are in video format, but they do look at others as well such as this: “Fake news: Kerala government arrested a Sabarimala child protester.”

Alt News frequently uses emotionally loaded language in their headlines such as this “Sensationalism, sleaze and misogyny – the other face of right-wing propaganda”. When it comes to sourcing, Alt News sources social media and also credible sources such as Indian Express and firstpost.com. While Alt News sometimes attempts debunking misinformation against the BJP such as here “No, Yogi Adityanath did not laugh at Pulwama martyr’s funeral; old video goes viral,”, they almost exclusively fact check those that favor the left and are opposed to the BJP.

In an interview published by Caravan Magazine, Sinha replied “We [Alt News] started in February 2017. The first year was completely dominated by the right wing in terms of misinformation put out. But now, there are several pages that do pro-Congress propaganda.” In other words, they are not just fact checking the BJP government.

A factual search reveals that Alt News has not failed a fact check. In fact, they are sometimes used by IFCN fact checkers for their photo and video debunking.

Overall, we rate Alt News Left Biased based on story (fact check) selection that favors the Left and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information and a clean fact check record, as well as being referenced by IFCN fact checkers. (M. Huitsing 4/26/2019)

Source: https://www.altnews.in