‘TIME’ magazine’s article on UP government’s COVID-19 management is ‘sponsored content’ - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
January 11, 2021
A post is being shared on social media with a claim that the ‘TIME’ magazine has published an article praising the Uttar Pradesh government for its COVID-19 management. Some verified handles on Twitter have also posted the photos of the article with a similar claim. Those tweets can be seen here and here. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: ‘TIME’ magazine has published an article praising the Uttar Pradesh government for its COVID-19 management.
Fact: The article in the ‘TIME’ magazine on Uttar Pradesh government’s COVID-19 management is not written by ‘TIME’. On the top-left corner of the article, ‘CONTENT FROM UTTAR PRADESH’ is mentioned. Many differences can be observed between the article on the Uttar Pradesh government and the articles written and published by ‘TIME’. Also, ‘TIME’ has clarified to ‘The Quint’ that the article on UP government’s COVID-19 management is a ‘sponsored content’. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
FACTLY accessed the physical copy of the ‘TIME’ magazine (December 21/ December 28, 2020) issued in India and looked for the article in the contents page, but the article title was not mentioned in the contents page. If ‘TIME’ has written and published the article, then the article title would have been mentioned in the contents page. Also, the Uttar Pradesh government article was not found in the international issue of the ‘TIME’ magazine.
On the top-left corner of the page ‘CONTENT FROM UTTAR PRADESH’ is written which implies that it is sponsored content.
The differences in fonts can be observed between the article on the Uttar Pradesh government and the articles written and published by ‘TIME’. Similarly, the font differences can be observed between the TIME’s own articles and the sponsored content from the ‘LIC’ in the same magazine. Also, it can be noticed that there are no page numbers on the pages where there are such sponsored articles.
‘Newslaundry’ has published an article on 06 January 2021 mentioning that several Indian news portals reported similar content, as published in the ‘TIME’ magazine, in December first week itself. Some of those articles can be read here, here, and here. Also, ‘The Quint’ reported that ‘TIME’ has clarified to them through email that the article on UP government’s COVID-19 management is ‘sponsored content’. FACTLY has also written to ‘TIME’ for clarification and this article will be updated when they respond.
To sum it up, the article on UP government’s COVID-19 management in the ‘TIME’ magazine is ‘sponsored content’.