Fact Check: Old news clip falsely shared as BBC insulting Chandrayaan-3 mission

Hyderabad: As the entire world is celebrating the historic achievement of India in space with the soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the moon, a clip of what seems like a panel discussion on a news channel is being widely shared on social media.

On August 23, 2023, India made history after the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3 made a soft landing on the moon’s South Pole. Launched on July 14, it took over 41 days to reach its destination.

Multiple accounts are claiming that the video shows a clip from the BBC news channel where the presenter is questioning the need for India to spend money on space programs such as Chandrayaan-3, when ‘they lack infrastructure and have extreme poverty.’

The viral video was shared by an X account called Megh Updates (@MeghUpdates), a few minutes after India made history on August 23, with the caption ‘Listen to what BBC had to say about #Chandrayaan3’. Even Anand Mahindra, the chairman of Mahindra Group, quoted the tweet.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false as the viral video is old and unrelated to Chandrayaan-3 mission.

First, we found many Indian media outlets like Live Mint, IndiaTV and Zee News which reported that the comments of the BBC presenter in the clip are related to Chandrayaan-3 landing on the moon.

However, we found evidence contrary to these claims.

On closely analyzing the viral video, we found a watermark that said ‘Visdesh Tv’ at the bottom of the video. By searching with relevant keywords, we found the extended video on the YouTube channel of Videsh TV with the title ‘BBC REACTION ON CHANDRAYAAN 2 :700 MILLION INDIANS DON’T HAVE TOILET WHY INDIA SPEND MONEY ON SPACE’ published on July 22, 2019.

The viral clip comes up at 1:07 minutes into the video.

We also found that the BBC News Press team tweeted a clarification on X that the viral clip is from an old video from 2019 and has nothing to do with the coverage or panel discussion of the Chandrayaan-3 mission.

Hence, we can conclude that the viral clip is misleading since the comments were not about the Chandrayaan-3 landing.