In a shocking incident late last night, Republic TV Editor-in-Chief and TV editor/anchor Arnab Goswami was attacked by two bike-borne goons, who reportedly claimed to be Congress youth workers. In a video statement released by Goswami post-physical attack, he accused Sonia Gandhi and Vadra family of the attack and said that he would hold them "personally responsible for any consequences of any attack" on him.
Goswami was already the center of controversies after he questioned Sonia Gandhi's silence on the Palghar lynching incident. Hashtags like #ArrestArnabGoswami as well as #ImwithArnabGoswami, were trending on Twitter post the debate, but when news of the attack broke, there were tweets in support of Arnab and against the whole incident. But what caught everyone's attention and swiftly became the topic of discussion were screenshots of meta-data, which suggested the video was created before the time of the alleged attack. Users also pointed out the timing of some tweets were sent even before the attack was announced.
Viral meta-data screenshots and timing of tweets
Political analyst Gaurav Pandhi had shared details of what he claimed was the meta-data of the Goswami's video file. Meta-data is used to get details about files and Pandhi used metadata2go website to extract the information about Goswami's video file.
According to him, the video was created on April 22, 2020, at 8.17 pm whereas Goswami in the video said the attack took place at 12:15 a.m. on April 23. The discrepancies in the timing created a stir that the whole attack was staged.
Besides this, tweets from BJP national spokesperson in support of Goswami raised some eyebrows. Apparently, Sambit Patra and Ashoke Pandit had tweeted about the incident even before the attack was announced by Republic TV at 1:06 a.m.
Fact check
Boom Live investigated both claims and found them to be inaccurate. Firstly, the meta-data information was perceived incorrectly. The timing of the file creation was in GMT, which is 5:30 hours behind IST. That way, the meta-data timing matches with that of the time when the video was posted on Twitter. Since the video was downloaded from Republic's Twitter handle, meta-data would show the timing of the upload rather than when it was created, which can be accessed from the device the video was shot.
As for the tweets that were allegedly tweeted before the incident was announced, Republic TV ran the news at 12:35 a.m. during a replay of debate by Goswami. Hence, both claims are inaccurate.
