Times of India and Other Corporate Media Publish Fake News on Comments Abusing Tom Moody

Several big media outlets including The Times of India and News18 embarrassed themselves after they fell for a fake story planted by RSS fake profiles about comments on cricketer Tom Moody's Facebook page.

The incident followed the upgrading of India's sovereign debt ratings by credit rating agency Moody’s on Thursday. RSS-supporting profiles, in what appears to be a well-orchestrated move, posed as Left supporters and went on comment-posting spree in the Facebook page of Australian cricketer Tom Moody.

The comments lambasted Tom Moody for the ratings upgrade, claiming that Moody had done this at the behest of Narendra Modi.

Soon, several media outlets began publishing stories claiming that CPI(M) supporters had mistaken Tom Moody for Moody's Investors Service.

"Comrades mistook Tom Moody for Moody's, shower criticism on cricketer's FB page," said the headline of a report published by The Times of India on Saturday, 18 November.

The headline of the News18 report said, "Tom Moody Trolled After Kerala CPM Supporters Mistake Him For Rating Agency Moody's".

FirstPost.com, Financial Express, Navbharat Times, Deccan Chronicle, ScoopWhoop and The News Minute also carried stories with similar claims.

Left supporters on Twitter, however, were quick to respond. Twitter user Advaid (@Advaidism) came up with a series of tweets, with screenshots of earlier posts by the Facebook profiles which were showering abuse on Tom Moody. These profiles have been around for quite some time, and they have been consistently sharing posts mocking the communists, he showed.

1) Mallu Sanghis create Fake profiles impersonating as CPM Cadres.
2) These fake profiles go into Tom Moody's FB page and abuse him.
3) Janam TV (RSS news channel in Kerala) reports it as CPM attacks Tom Moody.
4) @TOIIndiaNews & @thenewsminute fall for the fake Sanghi news. pic.twitter.com/zxQfhrdPOS

— Advaid (@Advaidism) November 18, 2017

One of the profiles had a Muslim-sounding name, and has been sharing posts from pro-RSS pages such as 'Sudharshanam'. Another one had a profile picture of Che Guevara, but has been sharing anti-Left propaganda. Yet another had a Christian-sounding name, and screenshots showed that he has been sharing posts by the pro-RSS page 'Outspoken'.

Case 6 : A commie sharing Outspoken? Only Sanghis do it pic.twitter.com/Ro2zi6dOxe

— Advaid (@Advaidism) November 18, 2017

Advaid and other users called out the media outlets which had published the fake news, which prompted some of them to add the response of the Left supporters to their stories. But the misleading headlines and the general thrust of the stories remained unchanged.

The Times of India went even further to publish yet another story titled "CPM trolls confuse Australian cricketer Tom Moody with credit rating agency Moody's" even after the fake news had been thoroughly exposed.

"Lies exposed! Fake sanghi profiles in disguise of comrades abused @TomMoodyCricket. @Advaidism busted the lies with screenshots of sangh cyber goons. In whose pay slips are you guys in @TOIIndiaNews @thenewsminute ?", wrote Twitter user Suvarna Haridas.

Malayalam news outlets such as Azhimukham, Mangalam and Deshabhimani carried reports debunking the stories which claimed that left supporters were trolling Tom Moody.

"ToI and the rest of the Delhi media are still acting like blind puppets," said Advaid, commenting on the refusal of the big media to retract the fake news.

Meanwhile, Tom Moody took to Twitter to respond to the comments and reports. "Thanks to all of you who have realise I don't work in the finance ratings industry!", he wrote, adding an emoji of a face with tears of joy to his humorous post.

"Creating fake profiles to mislead social media users is a classic ploy of the RSS. Some of them even post stuff, every now and then, that lead some people to think that these are genuinely left-supporting profiles. When an opportunity comes, they strike with absurd posts clearly aimed at embarrassing the Left," Suvarna told Newsclick.

"In this case, though, even such "due diligence" was missing. The profiles from which posts and comments abusing Tom Moody came were profiles which we all knew to be those of Sangh supporters. The unwillingness of the corporate media to do even the most basic fact-check is stunning," she added.

As the fake pro-RSS profiles were busted, the owners of the profiles tried deleting their old comments and posts. But the screenshots that exposed them had already been circulated by then.