The propaganda machinery has been working overtime to undermine Prime Minister Modi amidst the Coronavirus pandemic. One of the veteran propagandists, Ravish Kumar, has regularly spewed venom and furthered lies to malign the government. His legendary capacity to peddle fake news was once again exposed when Ravish Kumar propagated fake news and shared a fake TIME magazine cover in a bid to malign PM Modi.
Earlier today, Ravish Kumar had shared a TIME magazine cover page that shows a silhouette resembling that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the caption ‘TIME…. to go’.
Soon, Facebook fact-checkers deemed the image fake.
The truth about the fake TIME magazine cover page shared by Ravish Kumar
The fake TIME magazine cover had gone viral recently on Social Media as a cover page that was anticipating President Donald Trump losing elections in the Presidential election that is due to happen soon in the United States of America.
The fake image was shared by several American Twitter users and detractors of President Trump on social media recently.
https://twitter.com/RipleyPon13/status/1264168549968498689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/kay_1773/status/1261280580290961411?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwTIME confirms that the cover page was fake
A TIME magazine spokesperson had recently confirmed to Reuters that the viral cover page of TIME magazine was fake. Speaking to Reuters, in an email, TIME had confirmed that they had released no such cover page of their magazine.
Several other markers that the TIME cover page was fake
There are several other markers, as pointed out by the Reuters, that indicate that the TIME cover page was fake. For example, the cover page being circulated now, even by Ravish Kumar, had no timestamp of the issue or even the ‘time.com’ stamp at the bottom right corner as other authentic TIME magazine cover pages.
Further, it does include the words “double issue” in the top left corner, which some TIME magazine editions have.
Magsaysay award winner, Ravish Kumar, shares more fake news
Apart from sharing the fake TIME cover page and insinuating that it could be about PM Modi, Ravish Kumar has been sharing other lies from his Facebook page. While the TIME post has been deleted by him, other lies remain on his Facebook page where he urges others to spread the fake news far and wide.
Ravish Kumar had recently also shared a debunked fake news that was reported by Rohini Singh in the far-left propaganda outlet The Wire.
Recently, habitual fake news purveyor, Rohini Singh, authored an article for ‘The Wire’, titled- “Behind Ahmedabad’s Ventilator Controversy, a Backstory of Connections to Top BJP Leaders” which alleged that the Narendra Modi government is procuring 5000 ventilators from a Rajkot based firm which has already been accused of supplying substandard breathing machines to the Ahmedabad’s largest COVID-19 hospital.
Alluding ‘conflict of interest’, the article goes on to claim that the firm’s current and former promoters have had close ties to the BJP leaders-with one business family linked to the expensive suit that was gifted to PM Modi.
The Press Information Bureau of India took cognisance of the lies and deceit peddled by Ms Singh in The Wire. The official Twitter handle of PIB issued a tweet denouncing the article published on the leftist rag as fake. PIB claimed that the ventilators which Ms Singh is talking about in her article were not procured but were received as a donation. It further added that the quality of the ventilators, which is continuously being ridiculed in the article published on The Wire was in accordance with the required medical standards.