Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
Toshima Karki says let’s form another party as there is no hope from Rashtriya Swatantra Party.
Fact
Viral video is clipped from a speech by RSP MP Karki.
A video allegedly showing Rastriya Swatantra Party Member Of Parliament (MP) Dr Toshima Karki proposing forming another political party as there is no hope from the Swatantra Party is going viral on Facebook.
Facebook user Bishnu KC shared a reel video showing Swatantra Party MP Toshima Karki speaking on the microphone. In the video Karki says, “The Rastriya Swatantra Party doesn’t seem promising and the future of the party looks bleak. Let’s form another party.” Text superimposed on the video reads, “Hey brothers, she [Toshima Karki] fumbled. What is she saying?”
The video posted on December 4 has garnered 14.9k likes, 583 users have shared it and 591 people have commented until the time of writing this article. The archived version of the video can be seen here.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker took several keyframes from the viral video and conducted reverse searches on them but it didn’t give any results. Then we conducted a search on YouTube by using relevant keywords and found a video, dated August 19, 2023, published on the YouTube channel named ‘New Revolution of Nepal’.
On checking the video, we found that the video frame from 31-second to 40-second exactly matched the viral video. However, MP Karki was actually noting that some people were already saying that “there was no hope with Rashtriya Swatantra Party without even testing them or giving them the opportunity to prove what they can achieve. It was clear from the video that Swatantra Party Karki was not saying there was no hope from the party. The Youtube video title in Nepali read, “Toshima Karki hounded the people who talked about forming a new party.”
Then, we took a key frame from the YouTube video and ran a reverse search on Google which pointed us to a news article, dated August 19, 2023, published on Epardafash. The article carried the image of MP Karki which exactly matched a frame from the viral video.
According to the article, Karki was speaking at a committee formation programme of RSP in Lalitpur Metropolitan City where she laid stress on the need to retain the youth within the country and urged the state to create a conducive environment towards that end.
Thus, our findings clearly showed that the MP Karki was only saying that there were some cynics who doubted the prospects of the Rastriya Swatantra Party.
Conclusion
No, Swatantra Party MP didn’t propose forming a new party saying that the future with the RSP is bleak. The clipped viral video lacks the context.
Result: Missing Context
Sources
New Revolution of Nepal /YouTube, August 19, 2023
Epardafash, August 19, 2023
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
