The news of the discovery of gold mines with 3,500 tonnes of gold reserve in Uttar Pradesh’s Sonbhadra district first broke on the Feb 20th in regional papers. By February 22nd, 2020, the entire Indian media was abuzz with the news that Sonbhadra gold mines had gold deposits estimated to be around 3,350 tonnes and worth Rs 12 lakh crore, which is almost five times India’s current gold reserve. The reports quoted a District Mining Officer and estimated that with this find, India’s current gold reserve of 626 tonnes, would jump to second place in the world behind US which holds 8,133.5 tonnes of gold. Even though the reports mentioned ‘gold deposits’, they equated it to actual gold mined and added the entire 3350 tonnes to India’s current gold reserve. Such exuberant reporting continued till later in the day when Geological Survey of India intervened and denied making any such discovery. In this article, Alt News will trace how the Indian media fell for unverified news.

The coverage in Jagran news specified that it is a discovery of gold ore and it quoted Dr Rohtash, professor of Geology of BHU, who explained that the amount of gold that can be extracted from it depends on the grading of the deposit. However, this is not how it was interpreted by the time the news reached English media.

One of the earliest tweets on Feb 20th interpreting 3,350 tonnes of gold ore as 3,350 tonnes of actual gold mined was Mahesh Hegde, founder of the dubious website, Postcard News. Hegde linked the finding to India’s gold reserves implying that the entire 3,350 tonnes will be added to India’s gold reserves. This line of thinking was subsequently parroted by several mainstream media outlets.