Thread by @DisinfoEU

#BadSources - our latest investigation into how Indian news agency ANI repeatedly quoted non-existent bloggers, experts, journalists and think tanks spreading anti-Pakistan/China narratives in India. 🧵1/N

theBS.online
#BadSources #StoryKillers

To ease your reading, we've shortened ANI's #BadSources to BS in this thread. 2/N

It all started when we took another look at IFFRAS, a Canada-based think tank we had already exposed in our previous #IndianChronicles investigations. 3/N

We soon realised that IFFRAS' conferences quoted speakers who were non-existent or whose identity had been hijacked. 4/N

During one of these IFFRAS’ conferences, which supposedly took place on January 2020, we also noticed that they referred to some content that happened weeks after the event itself. 5/N

We knew IFFRAS had been legally dissolved in 2014: so how come ANI would be quoting this BS think tank twice a week? We then reversed our searches and started to look at other orgs and individuals being quoted by ANI. 6/N

We spent a considerable amount of time trying to get in touch and find any trace of the existence of the BS personae listed below. We found none. 7/N

Among others, a James Bond fan, a basketball player and a management consultant became the BS experts quoted by ANI, addressing topics such as Pakistan’s army doctrines and China’s “wolf warrior diplomacy”. 8/N

These BS personae would make us laugh, except for the fact that they end up being republished as experts in several Indian media outlets, thus contributing to the propaganda loop and imposing narratives that sediment over time. 9/N

In our previous investigations, we mentioned that ANI had already covered BS fake media, fake NGOs and more, repeatedly. A long-lasting BS coverage. 10/N

We had already exposed a great deal in the past, but ANI doesn't seem to mind publishing BS. We're concerned about how to stop this from happening again. While we have no easy solutions to offer, here are our recommendations. 11/N

We need to acknowledge that a lot of BS serving internal propaganda in some countries are produced and enabled by real or fake orgs and persons in Europe and North America. We have a moral responsibility to try to tackle it. 12/N

We also looked into what could happen in the coming months, and we have little doubt that BS and their spreaders will try to discredit our work in any way they can – not excluding the possible use of further BS. 13/N

We are honoured to have worked with @FbdnStories and their media partners on this investigation. 14/N
#StoryKillers

Thank you for getting this far in the thread. We count on you, fellow readers, to keep fighting the BS. 15/N

Our report is available here: theBS.online