Alleged fact-checking website Alt News received donations from the controversial author Arundhati Roy’s trust if a report by Business Standard is to be believed. As per the report, Arundhati Roy’s trust named Zindabad Trust had donated an unspecified amount to Alt News.
The report also quoted Roy as confirming her support to Alt News, which she justifies by stating that, “it is doing a wonderful job of trying to set the record straight and counter the propaganda masqueraded as news”. This Zindabad trust was set up by Roy via her earnings from the 1997 Booker Prize award money.
It might be slightly ironic to consider that Arundhati Roy has decided to fund a fact-checking website considering she herself has been notorious for spreading Fake News.
We had reported how Roy had developed a habit to routinely spread fake news and had managed to get away with it. Some of the fake news included distorting contemporary Indian history and spreading untruths about the 2002 Gujarat Riots.
Some, though, might say that Alt News and Arundhati Roy might be a match made in heaven, considering the fact-checking website too isn’t without its share of controversies.
It was reported that the co-founder of Alt News itself was found spreading Fake News multiple times, via the Facebook ‘parody’ page Unofficial: Subramanian Swamy. First, the co-founder was caught spreading the fake news about former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa, and then for spreading a lie about a protest in Delhi, while the quoted video was actually of a Mumbai Maratha Kranti Morcha. The latest lie to be spread by the Facebook page was in regards to Modi government’s view on multi-brand retail.
It was also reported how the said fact-checking website had slandered an army veteran, who was later allegedly denied space to provide a counter view.