Asian News International (ANI), India’s largest news service, often bases its articles on data from questionable think tanks and seemingly non-existent authors, a new report by the Brussels-based non-profit EU DisinfoLab has found. The non-profit organisation highlighted narratives promoted through ANI by fake personae that are nearly solely critical of Pakistan and China in its most recent report, "Bad Sources”. According to the investigation, the agency often cited a think tank that was dissolved in 2014 and is no longer in existence. The report also alleged that multiple bloggers, geopolitical experts and journalists quoted by ANI are fictional.
The most recent investigation focuses on the website of the International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS), a Canadian think tank. ANI was found to have cited IFFRAS around 200 times between May 2021 and January 2023. The report states that in most cases, ANI was not merely citing, but using IFFRAS reports as the basis of its articles. Former Canadian MP Mario Silva served as the chairman of IFFRAS, which was established in 2012. While it was dissolved in 2014 and Silva informed the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2019 that it was defunct, their website is still accessible today. In a 2019 investigation, EU DisinfoLab linked the Srivastava Group, an Indian company owned by a self-described entrepreneur headquartered in New Delhi, to the think tank's website as well as that of other Canadian fake news websites. The website has since continued to be updated, despite the think tank being dissolved.
Several reports featured remarks that were allegedly made at conferences IFFRAS hosted. The majority of the 70 professors and professionals who were claimed to have spoken at these conferences did not exist, according to EU DisinfoLab, while a small number of those who could be identified denied being aware of the conferences. “For instance, we could find no trace of ‘Ms Oliver Carter’ as a professor at the University of Toronto. The same applies with ‘Ms Staphany Campebell - Assistant Professor, University of Manitoba’. Instead, we observed the same tendency as in our previous investigations: mistyping the names of individuals,” the report said.
The nonprofit also stumbled onto the Policy Research Group (POREG), while investigating other organisations commonly reported by ANI. Three new contributors joined the platforms in the last two years, according to the report. However, these contributors — James Duglous Crickton, Magda Lipan, or Valentin Popescu — also seem to be non-existent. “All this would be laughable if it weren’t the case that hundreds of press articles eventually republished the content produced by all these fake personae. Sadly, the overwhelming majority of these reports are being reproduced across Indian media, reaching hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of readers,” the report said.
Long term effects of such reporting leads to the public losing trust in the media and genuine think tanks. Furthermore, with multiple news platforms republishing such content, “readers can easily lose track of the original sources and actors involved in the amplification loop. The narratives then become so sedimented in the public debate as legitimate positions that it becomes literally impossible to challenge them,” it said. It is to be noted that EU DisinfoLab has previously found that ANI would quote from fake media outlets that were specifically created to push anti-Pakistan and anti-China narratives in India.