Only hours after the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the name of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Times Now exposed a massive public relations (PR) hoax by revealing how AltNews’ Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha were never Nobel Peace Prize favourites, a claim that OpIndia had already debunked.

Earlier in the day, Human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights group Center for Civil Liberties were declared the joint winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to document human rights abuses.

Prior to the announcement of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner, it was widely reported that Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha, founders of the fake news factory that calls itself the “fact-checking” website Alt News were among the list of prospective winners for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The propaganda was peddled after TIME magazine listed some of the shortlisted candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 that included the names of Alt News Pratik Sinha and Zubair. 

Times Now has, however, debunked this claim and revealed how this circulating rumor about Mohammad Zubair and Pratik Sinha being among the shortlisted candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 was nothing but a PR hoax.

It is worth noting that OpIndia had already dismissed the claim, pointing out how there is no such thing as an official list from which the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, and that the names cited by TIME Magazine were simply speculations made by a media oorganizationwhose ideology is anchored in the global left.

Now, Times Now has also exposed how the names of the duo that was circulated in a Time magazine article were part of the “biggest Nobel PR con job.”

Times Now writes to the Norwegian Nobel Committee which denies that there was any shortlist of candidates

In order to determine whether there was any factual basis for Time Magazine to name Zubair and Pratik as contenders for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, Times Now wrote to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which categorically denied that there was any shortlist of candidates.

In an email response to Times Now, the Nobel Committee emphasised that it does not provide the names of nominees to the media or the contenders themselves. Furthermore, for the next 50 years, the Committee will not reveal such nomination-related data.

The Committee further emphasised in its statement that these advanced hypotheses are the result of pure speculation.

Notably, nominees for the Nobel Prize in any category cannot be revealed until fifty years have passed. That is part of the reward committee’s rule. “Neither the names of nominators nor of nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize may be divulged until 50 years have elapsed,” says the official website of the Nobel Prize.

Times Now further pointed out how Time magazine had cited to three sources in its report on nominees: a Reuters survey, which did not include Pratik and Zubair’s names; bookmakers’ odds, which also did not include the duo; and the PRIO director’s list.’

Zubair and Pratik’s names appeared solely on the director of the Oslo Peace Research Institute’s personal list. For the record, the director has no say in who is nominated or who wins.

Henrik Urdal, the director, only mentioned Zubair and Pratik as “other worthy contestants” in passing. Their names were not even on the PRIO director’s list of five recommendations.

TIME magazine’s list of the shortlisted candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 included names of Alt News’ Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha

It may be recalled that TIME Magazine had placed Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha, founders of the fake news factory that calls itself the “fact-checking” website Alt News, among the list of prospective winners for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize alongside Volodymyr Zelensky, WHO, David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, Alexey Navalny among others.

Mohammad Zubair is the man responsible for unleashing the wave of Islamist violence in India that resulted in the death of at least 6 Hindus, including Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur and Umesh Kolhe in Amravati. These brutal deaths were a direct fallout of Mohammed Zubair’s dangerous dog-whistling against ex-BJP leader Nupur Sharma, which instigated Islamists, who then went on to kill the Hindus who came out in support of the BJP leader. Not only this, Zubair was arrested in June for hurting religious sentiments, destroying evidence, and other charges majorly belonged to Pakistan, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and other middle-east nations.

Considering all these facts are in the public domain, it is incredibly ironic that the Times Magazine included his name on a list of qualified contenders for the Nobel Peace Prize 2022.

While making a case for their win, Time Magazine described Sinha and Zubair as crusaders battling misinformation online, conveniently missing out and pointing out occasions when the two were caught red-handed spreading fake news and falsehoods. 

“Journalists Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair, co-founders of Indian fact-checking website AltNews, have relentlessly been battling misinformation in India, where the Hindu nationalist BJP party has been accused of frequently stoking discrimination against Muslims,” read the article in TIME Magazine, dressing up pro-Congress propagandists as ‘journalists’ and revealing the organization’s penchant for vilifying the democratically elected government of India, besides scaremongering over the imaginary institutional “discrimination” against Muslims. 

As Time’s report authored by Sanya Mansoor got published, several leftist Indian media houses like The News Minute, Outlook India, NDTV, The Wire, The Pioneer, etc as well as the liberal cabal jumped to the front to announce that the duo got “nominated” for the Nobel Peace Prize or at least suggested that they are indeed in the race.

OpIndia had, however, debunked the claim by pointing out how there is no such thing as an official list from which the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, and that the names cited by TIME Magazine were simply speculations made by a media organization whose ideology is anchored in the global left. But cheerleaders of Zubair and Sinha, who extol them for “fact-checking”, could not distinguish between a shortlist and a speculative list by a media organization.

References:

opindia.com