PIB’s Fact Check team under RTI scrutiny

Since December 2019, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) has been debunking fake news with an initiative called PIB Fact Check, which mostly seeks to set right misinformation pertaining to the Central government ministries and departments. However, all these days, very little was known about the PIB Fact Check itself. Who are these fact checkers, how they choose and select which news to “debunk” and so on.

However, an RTI reply to questions filed by Hyderabad-based activist

Kareem Ansari, manages a website YouRTI, throws some interesting light on it.

PIB seems to have largely tried to emulate United Kingdom’s Rapid Response Unit (RRU), which monitors social media in that country. The RRU, which was formed in 2018, doesn’t issue rebuttals or bust fake news on its own, but helps various government departments do it. PIB goes a step further with Fact Check by calling out media outlets and reporters directly on Twitter.

According to a document from June 2019 which discussed the need for setting up a unit to fight misinformation, the RRU was called a “best practice”. Further, the document proposed using the FACT model (Find, Assess, Create, Target) and RESIST toolkit, both of which were developed for RRU, as a means of fighting misinformation.

PIB Fact Check’s standard operating procedure (SOP) is also largely based on the FACT model.

Once its finds and assesses a threat posed by a piece of fake news, it works on “creating” a counter-narrative. The team works with various ministries to check the veracity of the news and whether it needs to be countered.