NEW DELHI: A video of an Emirati man saying “Jai Siya Ram” in Abu Dhabiwent viral after being shared by major TV channels such as Times Now andZee News, on the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Abu Dhabi.However, it also resulted in massive embarrassment for the media houses.
The video was from a programme conducted by spiritual leader Morari Bapu inSeptember, 2016. While Times Now and Zee News acknowledged the video wasold, they claimed that the man in the video, who is actually a UAE-basedjournalist, was the Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The first to crack down on the news channels for circulating a fake videowas Dubai-based newspaper Gulf News.
The newspaper’s website published a scathing report, accusing Indian newsoutlets of spreading “false propaganda” to “gain political mileage inIndia.”
The Gulf News report pointed out that the Crown Prince was Chief Guest forIndia’s Republic Day parade in 2017. The report said that Indian mediagroups were incapable of “responsible journalism” for not being able tocorrectly identify the Crown Prince.
Saying the video was fake, the report said it was a “clear indication thatthe mainstream media in India is falling prey to propaganda and fake news”.The report also pointed out the timing of the story being posted, which wasjust before Modi arrived in UAE.
“The patter of a known fake and out-of-context video being deliberatelyrecirculated multiple times by a selected section of the Indian media is aclear pointer that the objective of the exercise is to spread malicious andfalse propaganda on a swathe of unsuspecting news consumers,” the reportsaid.
While the UAE Embassy in India did not issue a statement, its officialhandle on Twitter shared the Gulf News report.
While Zee News has deleted the story online, Times Now updated the story toreflect the real speaker in the video, but has not issued a statement ofcorrection.
The video gained a lot of traction online, with several notable peoplesharing the video on Twitter. The video went up around the same time asfake images emerged of the first Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi that the PrimeMinister was to inaugurate.