How media fooled the gold reserve discovery.

The coverage in Jagran news specified that it is a discovery of gold ore and it quoted Dr Rohtash, professor of Geology of BHU, who explained that the amount of gold that can be extracted from it depends on the grading of the deposit. However, this is not how it was interpreted by the time the news reached English media.

One of the earliest tweets on Feb 20th interpreting 3,350 tonnes of gold ore as 3,350 tonnes of actual gold mined w mias Mahesh Hegde, founder of the dubious website, Postcard News. Hegde linked the finding to India’s gold reserves implying that the entire 3,350 tonnes will be added to India’s gold reserves. This line of thinking was subsequently parroted by several mainstream media outlets.

A widely quoted story by Times of India and Economic Times researched the value of gold reserves of different countries and estimated that with this discovery, India’s gold reserve would jump to second place behind the US.

It is noteworthy that almost all the media outlets took the line of thinking that gold ore is the same as gold extracted. A Money Control report was a little more specific about the discovery being ‘gold ore’ which gave a clue that the actual gold extracted would only be a fraction of the amount. However, like the others, the story here also stated that the discovery was five times India’s current reserve.

Oblivious to the distinction between gold ore and actual gold mined, there was massive celebration on media as well as social media. Predictably, soon enough, the ruling party in the state was given credit for the discovery. “Yogi Adityanath strikes gold”, read a Financial Express headline which was extensively shared on social media crediting the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister for the find.

UP Deputy CM KP Maurya went on to give media byte that the discovery will help in making India financially strong.

RBI Director, S. Gurumurthy, tweeted about the possibility of India controlling the world gold market.

No discovery of gold

However, it turned out that there was no such discovery of gold. “GSI has not estimated such kind of vast resource of gold deposits in Sonbhadra district”, GSI Director General (DG) M Sridhar told PTI.

Geological Survey of India issued a press release, clarifying that the exploration was carried out in field season 1998-99 and 1999-2000 and stating that “the mineralised zone having an average grade of 3.03 grams per tonne of gold is tentative in nature and the total gold which can be extracted from the total resource of 52,806.25 tonnes of ore is approximately 160 kg and not 3,350 tonnes as mentioned in the media.”

click link to read the false claims made by media 👉 click link