Fact-Check: A1 Bharat News clickbaits viewers into watching their video by talking about new lockdowns

On September 25,2021, a YouTube channel called A1 Bharat News posted a daily news rundown on September 25 where they seem to be covering the “biggest” stories of the day.

The first segment of the show is on giving a rundown of news that is to be covered in the rest of the show.

The very first headline is that a lockdown is going to be announced in multiple states because of rising cases in the country. The anchor repeatedly emphasizes on the fact that a lockdown is going to be imposed.

Fact-Check:

Upon watching the rest of the video, we found that the anchor makes no mention of lockdowns in the rest of the video but simply talks about schools opening up in various states.

Additionally, COVID-19 cases in India are currently stable and not at a steep rise as the previous two waves

The news channel only mentioned the lockdowns in the beginning to get their viewers to stay and watch the video in order to get more views. This clickbait nature of news is very much prevalent in today’s media channels. This claim is therefore not only misleading but also creates a false sense of panic among the masses.

DFRAC Editor

Digital Forensics, Research and Analytics Centre (DFRAC) is a non-partisan and independent media organisation which focuses on fact-checking and identifying hate speech. With the popularisation of the internet came the challenge of information overload and often times, our feeds are overpopulated with conflicting, incendiary and false information which is increasingly becoming difficult to ignore and not believe in

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