Fact-Check: Are media houses the next target of Rakesh Tikait?

On September 28,2021, Sudhir Chaudhary, the Editor-in-chief of Zee News posted a clip of BKU leader Rakesh Tikait speaking to the media. In the clip, Tikait can be seen saying that “the next target is media houses. If you want to survive then support us or else you will suffer”.

Chaudhary captioned the video further asserting that Tikait wants to “attack” media houses. The video went viral and received over 1,82,000 views on Twitter.

The video was then subsequently re-posted hundreds of times on Twitter.

Fact-Check:

Upon reverse searching the frames of this video, we found that several news media outlets had posted a longer version of this 12 second clip. This clip is from the same day when Tikait arrived in Raipur.

The longer clip posted by ANI shows that Tikait actually said that “the government’s next target will be media houses”. He also asks them to join the farmers to protect themselves from the government’s next move.

Since Tikait’s claim was presented out of context, this claim is misleading.