FALSE: Media is not reporting on misleading video about deaths in India

At a glance

• Claim: The media is not reporting on a misleading video that shows people dying on the streets of India due to COVID-19. 
• Rating: FALSE
• The facts: At least three Indian fact-checkers have reported on the misleading video.
• Why we fact-checked this: This was flagged by Facebook’s fact-checking tool as potentially misleading. It has 3,600 views, 207 reactions, and 33 comments, as of writing. Four Facebook users have reported this video as potentially misleading.

Complete details

According to social media personality Lynn Agno or “Lynn Channel,” the media is not reporting on a misleading video that shows people dying on the streets of India due to COVID-19. The news media is allegedly not reporting on this misleading video in order to scare the public or cause panic.

Agno also shows a video of a person living in India who said that there were no people dying on the streets of the country.

These claims are false. 

Indian fact-checkers did report on the misleading video about people dying on the streets of India. Agno even read out a fact check article about the video from the Indian news media website The Quint. The Quint’s article was published on April 29. 

The digital journalism initiative BOOM and the fact-checking website Alt News, which are both based in India, also fact-checked the video on April 25 and 29, respectively. 

Meanwhile, the video of a person living in India who said there was no one dying on the streets was fact-checked by Reuters on April 29. 

As of Wednesday, May 12, India accounts for one in three of the reported deaths from coronavirus around the world, according to a Reuters tally. According to India’s health ministry data, there have been 4,205 deaths due to COVID-19 and their overall cases are past 23 million.

Agno’s claim was made in a video on the Facebook page “Piniritong kawali” on April 30. It was flagged by Facebook’s fact-checking tool as potentially misleading. It has 3,600 views, 207 reactions, and 33 comments, as of writing. Four Facebook users have reported this video as potentially misleading. – Vernise Tantuco/Rappler.com

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