Political

Fake BBC report claiming “Rahul Gandhi as World’s 3rd Most Trustworthy Political Leader” is viral

Written by Abdul M

A screenshot purportedly of a BBC news report featuring Rahul Gandhi has gone viral on social media. The screenshot has an image of Rahul Gandhi and has the headline that reads, “Rahul Gandhi voted 3rd most trustworthy political leader in the world – Poll” The lead of the news report reads, “An opinion poll conducted by WIN/Gallup International has rated Rahul Gandhi as the 3rd most “trustworthy” political leader after US President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi shares the 69th position in the poll ratings with Chinese President Xi Jinping.”

The image is shared with the caption that reads in Hindi: “भक्तों burnol खतम हो जाए तो पाकिस्तान से मंगवा लेना। Rahul Gandhi voted 3rd most trustworthy political leader in the world. Congratulations.” (Which translates in English as, “Bhakts get Burnol from Pakistan if it finishes. Rahul Gandhi voted 3rd most trustworthy political leader in the world. Congratulations.”).

Similar posts can also be seen here, here, and here. The post is also shared on Facebook.

Facto Check:

We searched in Google with the headline and found no such media report. We also searched with the headline on BBC website and found no result. We further searched for the two other articles mentioned in the screenshot. We found that both the stories, The lost boy and Japan’s parenting debate and Looking into the massacres of Indonesia’s past were published on June 3, 2016, and June 2, 2016, respectively.

On closely observing the image we found that the date mentioned in the article is January 11, 2016, and the news is Tagged with ‘World‘, written next to the date. While investigating on BBC website, under BBC>NEWS>WORLD, all the articles are tagged based on their Geography.  There is no article that is tagged to ‘WORLD‘ as claimed in the viral image. News about an Indian leader should have come under BBC>News>Asia>India and tagged to Asia.

Screenshot : BBC

As per the viral image, the poll was conducted by Gallup internation which has allegedly declared Rahul Gandhi as most trusted leader in the world. We searched the website of the Gallup International, an association of polling organizations registered in Zurich, Switzerland, and found no report that says Rahul Gandhi as the third most trustworthy political leader. However, we found two Gallup International survey reports published in 2017 and 2018, which ranked Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the third and fourth World’s most favourable leader respectively.

Conclusion: It is evident that a morphed image is viral on social media to falsely claim that Rahul Gandhi as the third most trusted political leader in the world.

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About the author

Abdul M

Fact-Checker @Facto_News, Political Analyst, Social Media Expert

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