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
Nepali television journalist Tika Ram Yatri died in an accident on his way to Dharan.
Yatri was the former editor-in-chief of AP1 Television and known for his popular talk-show Tamasoma Jotirgamaya.
TikTok user @salam_x1234 posted a video carrying a photo of journalist Tika Ram Yatri with the text superimposed on it reading, “He [Tika Ram Yatri] is no more. He died in an accident on his way to Dharan today.” The video posted on June 9 has garnered 5083 likes, 405 users have shared it and 1033 people have commented until the time of publishing this article.
The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Fact
To check the veracity of the truth behind the viral video, Newschecker began its search by running a keyword search on Google. However, we didn’t find any results resembling the claim. We, then, checked the social media page of journalist Yatri and found him regularly updating his Facebook page with short interview clips from his show.
On thoroughly checking his posts, we found a post, dated June 9, on his Facebook wall where he wrote, “We can do a lot with constructive use of social media but its misuse could be suicidal. As I was busy all day, I just knew about the rapid spread of misinformation created by the abuse of social media. I am still working in Kathmandu. I just realised that the day would come when I have to say that I can debunk misinformation. Perhaps my life has prolonged due to the neutralisation of negative planetary effects…”
We scanned the comments and found a screenshot of the viral TikTok video post by a commentator when people questioned what he was trying to refer to with the post. We also noticed that the image carried in the viral video was taken from his Facebook profile picture.
Thus, our findings clearly indicate that journalist Tika Ram Yatri is alive and he posted on his Facebook page about the rumour of his passing.
Result: False
Sources
Tika Ram Yatri /Facebook
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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.
