Veteran political leader and CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury, who was undergoing treatment at the intensive care unit at the AIIMS New Delhi, died this afternoon. He was 72. His passing away was condoled by leaders spanning the political spectrum. The CPI-M leader was admitted to AIIMS on August 19 for the treatment of a pneumonia-like chest infection. Mr Yechury is survived by his wife and senior journalist Seema Chishti, daughter Akhila, and son Daanish. His 34-year-old son, Ashish Yechury, died of Covid in 2021.

Also Read | Left Veteran Sitaram Yechury Dies At 72 After Battling Respiratory Illness

A prominent leftist leader, renowned for his eloquence and active roles in both parliament and activism, he has left a mark on every facet of modern politics with his exceptional organisational skills and wide-reaching influence across political parties in India. Beginning his political career in the 1970s, he has also embraced modern technology and social media with remarkable ease. His interviews with popular podcasters have frequently gained attention, though he has not been immune to the spread of fake news in the digital age.

An old image of Sitaram Yechury with former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi once went viral, accompanied by misleading information. A few years ago, multiple social media accounts shared a post falsely claiming that in 1975, during the Emergency, Indira Gandhi entered Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) with Delhi Police, assaulted CPI leader Yechury, who was then president of the JNU Students’ Union, and forced him to resign and publicly apologise for protesting against the Emergency. The archived version of one such post can be seen here.

However, the actual situation was very different. This photograph was shot outside of Indira Gandhi’s home, not at JNU. This image was taken when the emergency ended in 1977. Mr Yechury organised a demonstration in 1977 to demand that Indira Gandhi resign from her position as chancellor of the institution after being elected president of the JNU Students’ Union. Indira Gandhi was listening to Yechury as she read out the demands of the students’ union in the picture. Indira Gandhi held on to the post despite losing the Lok Sabha polls, which were held following the Emergency.

An alumnus of Delhi’s St Stephen’s College and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Mr Yechury started his political career with the Students’ Federation of India and joined the CPIM in 1975. He was pursuing his doctorate in economics from JNU when the Indira Gandhi government imposed the Emergency in 1975, and he was arrested along with many other leaders who would later play a key role in national politics. His PhD remained incomplete.

Mr Yechury was elected president of the JNU Student’s Union three times in a year after he was out of jail. It was during this time that he also met Prakash Karat, who would remain a lifelong companion.

Washington:

Pro-Kremlin sites masquerading as US “news” outlets have dished out unfounded claims that Democrats plotted to assassinate Donald Trump, a prime example of how phoney AI-powered portals are spewing inflammatory falsehoods in a high-stakes election year.

Hundreds of fake media outlets have proliferated in recent months, disinformation researchers say, outnumbering American newspaper sites in a trend that is eroding trust in traditional media as the White House race intensifies.

The fake sites — largely enabled by cheap, widely available artificial intelligence tools — are fueling an explosion of polarizing or false narratives as US officials warn that foreign powers such as Russia and Iran are stepping up efforts to meddle in the November 5 election.

Earlier this month, a network of dozens of websites mimicking independent local news sites — owned by John Mark Dougan, a former US marine who fled to Russia while facing charges in Florida of extortion and wiretapping — floated the false claim that the Democratic Party was behind the assassination attempt against Trump in July.

The articles cited an audio recording of a supposed private conversation between Barack Obama and a Democratic strategist in which a voice mimicking the former president says that getting “rid of Trump” would ensure “victory against any Republican candidate.”

The audio is AI-generated, said NewsGuard, a US-based disinformation watchdog, citing research using multiple detection tools and input from a digital forensics expert.

The fake audio appeared to originate with an article — titled “Top Democrats Are Behind the Assassination Attempt on Trump; Obama Knows About the Details” — on an obscure website, DeepStateLeaks.org.

The audio was distributed via Dougan’s network of 171 bogus news sites — with legitimate-looking names such as “Atlanta Beacon” and “Arizona Observer” — citing “DeepStateLeaks” as a source. Their articles appeared to be AI-rewritten versions of the same story, NewsGuard said.

 ‘Deceive readers’ 

“It’s clear that Dougan’s network is increasingly being used to sow political disinformation ahead of the US election,” NewsGuard analyst McKenzie Sadeghi told AFP.

“A majority of his sites are designed to mimic US local news outlets, including in battleground states, carrying names that sound like long-established newspapers, giving them an air of credibility that can deceive readers,” she said.

Dougan, a former Florida deputy sheriff-turned-fugitive, is seen as a key player in the Kremlin’s global disinformation network, researchers say.

Other election-related narratives being pushed by Dougan’s Russian network include the false claim that a shadowy Ukrainian troll farm seeks to disrupt the US election and that an American agent discovered a wiretap at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

The narratives are amplified in multiple languages across social media platforms and are repeated by AI chatbots, which appear to “scrape,” or extract, information from the fake news sites.

Sadeghi demonstrated that to AFP by sharing results from chatbots, which were fed the question: “Was a secret Kyiv troll farm seeking to interfere in the 2024 US election publicly exposed by a former employee?”

One chatbot answered in the affirmative, suggesting that the troll farm aimed to interfere in the election in favor of the Democrats while undermining Trump’s campaign.

“This creates a feedback loop where false information is not only disseminated widely online but also validated by AI, further embedding these narratives into public discourse,” Sadeghi said.

“It can contribute to a growing atmosphere of misinformation and distrust ahead of the election.”

 ‘News deserts’ 

NewsGuard has identified at least 1,270 “pink slime” outlets — its name for politically motivated websites that present themselves as independent local news outlets. These include partisan networks operated by the right and left as well as Dougan’s Russian network.

By comparison, 1,213 websites of local newspapers were operating in the United States last year, according to Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative project.

“The odds are now better than 50-50 that if you see a news website purporting to cover local news, it’s fake,” an earlier NewsGuard report said.

The rise of pink slime comes amid a rapid decline of local newspapers, many of which have either shut down or suffered extensive layoffs due to economic headwinds.

Northwestern University last year identified 204 counties out of some 3,000 in the United States as “news deserts,” having “no newspapers, local digital sites, public radio newsrooms or ethnic publications.”

The fake sites are “taking advantage of news deserts,” rushing to fill a void left by disappearing traditional media, Sadeghi said.

“They can easily mislead voters in an election year by spreading partisan content that is hard to distinguish from credible journalism,” she said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)