CLAIMA photo showing former US President
Barack Obama watching Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremony is making the rounds on social media platforms and WhatsApp. The intent is to make people believe that Obama was watching the ceremony.
“This is the power of Modi. In the USA, Obama is listening to his swearing-in ceremony,” reads the caption of a post made in Hindi by a Facebook user.
Similarly, on Twitter, another user shared the same image with the same claim in English.
We cannot say for sure that Obama did not watch the swearing-in ceremony but the photo used above to make that claim is a fake.
Apart from this image, a video showing a crowd in a bar going berserk watching Modi swearing in as the prime minister for the second consecutive term is also going viral.
The video was shared by Vikas Bhadauria, a journalist. He wrote, “An image that makes you feel you have not seen it enough times. It still touches my heart.”
TRUTHBoth the image (of Obama watching Modi’s swearing-in ceremony) as well as the video (of crowd going crazy) are digitally altered.
VERIFICATION AND METHODOLOGYObama-Modi imageUsing reverse-image search option on Google, we were able to trace the original image from 2014, when Obama was still serving as the US president.
The original image as shared by
CNN’s chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta on June 26, 2014.
Acosta credited the image to American photographer Doug Mills.
Obama was apparently clicked while watching USA vs Germany World Cup match aboard Air Force One.
The digitally-altered version of the image has a watermark saying “@Atheist_Krishna”, a Twitter user popular for sharing Photoshopped images that many find funny.
After going through his profile, we found the tweet which had the digitally-manipulated version of Obama’s original image. It is possible that few took it seriously and reshared it as credible information.
People celebrating Modi’s swearing-in ceremonyUsing keywords ‘fans at bar celebrating’ on YouTube, we found the original video dated June 16, 2016.
Fans at Ashton Gate Stadium, Bristol, celebrate England winner against Wales at Euro 2016
This video showed fans watching Euro 2016 erupting after a last moment goal by
Daniel Sturridge of England.
The digitally-altered version of the video had the same “@Atheist_Krishna” watermark. We then traced his tweet sharing the video.
VERDICTTimes Fact Check has found that the image used to claim that Barack Obama was watching PM Modi’s swearing-in ceremony to be a fake.
We have also found that many people, including journalists, are sharing the video showing people screaming with joy seeing Modi’s swearing-in ceremony, as news without realizing that it is a digitally-manipulated version of an old video of some people at a bar going berserk watching a game of soccer.