With India in the midst of a heated national election campaign, false and misleading images — sometimes republished by mainstream media — fueled calls for military retaliation against rival Pakistan.
showed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posing for cameras instead of paying tribute to the slain paramilitary officers.
The effect of fake news was exacerbated by a lack of details from the Indian government and conflicting accounts provided by India and Pakistan. The day after the attack, the CRPF set up a team of 12 soldiers to fact-check the deluge of fake posts. They asked their force of 300,000 soldiers spread across India to identify misleading posts, which were fact-checked at headquarters, and to speak up in their private WhatsApp groups to correct misinformation.
“It was really heartbreaking,” said one team member who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media. “Forty of our martyrs had laid down their lives for the integrity of the country. If hatred was being spread in their names, we thought that this defeats the purpose. So we decided to counter it.”
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