Aaj Tak Falls For Fake News About Fatwa Against Priya Varrier, Airs An Entire Debate On It

Fake news has started receiving a lot more traction than it had in the past due to the presence of social media. They are so believable that news channels fall victim to these snippets of made-up sensationalism and run stories on them.

This is exactly what happened when a tweet about a fatwa against Priya P. Varrier for her wink in the song, Manikya Malaraya Poovi was picked up by a leading Hindi news channel Aaj Tak.

The tweet went something like this,

https://twitter.com/TiimesHow/status/963644759167389696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thequint.com%2Fnews%2Fwebqoof%2Faaj-tak-falls-prey-to-fake-tweet-on-priya-varrier-viral-song-airs-debate-on-it

Do you see what’s wrong with it? Yup, you guessed it, this is a parody account because the handle is Times How and not the legitimate news portal, Times Now. However, in light of recent events what with people filing complaints about hurt Muslim sentiments, we wouldn’t be surprised if this actually happened.

However, that does not put Aaj Tak off the hook for propagating fake news and hosting a full-fledged debate on the topic. The anchor of the show, Anjana Om Kashyap starts off with a one-minute monologue about how this is a fatwa on love.

You can watch the entire video here:

In the video, she quotes the tweet specifically calling out Maulana Qadri’s “statement”.

While a lot of people on social media did fall for the gag, many seemed to notice what actually went wrong. In lieu of the backlash that Aaj Tak received for the fake news, the anchor Anjana Om Kashyap took to Twitter to share a short video clip of the Maulana talking about how the song hurt Islamic sentiments.

This is a special tweet with Maulana Qadri’s bite. He talks of action against the song in Priya Varrier video. Halla Bol debated the Raza Academy/ two Maulanas who wanted a ban on the song because it talks of Khadija Bibi the first wife of the Prophet. Know your facts. pic.twitter.com/whkCNhQidp

— Anjana Om Kashyap (@anjanaomkashyap) February 14, 2018

However, although the Maulana is complaining about the song, he isn’t saying the statements that he was accused of by the anchor.

It’s true that their heart was in the right place and they wanted to bring to light the triviality of blowing things out of proportion when so many real problems plague the nation. But yeah, fake news is fake news.