British Herald, Who! How Indian Media Fell for an Unknown Website’s Poll Praising PM Modi

1. British Herald, Who? How Indian Media Fell For An Unknown Website’s Poll Praising PM Modi After talking to British Herald officials, BOOM found that the poll has several discrepancies and ambiguities that were ignored by the Indian media during its coverage.

2. News» Last week, Twitter was abuzz with a poll conducted by an unknown magazine called British Herald which named Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the most powerful person in the world. BOOM decided to look into the magazine and the poll they conducted, to ascertain its reliability and relevance. BOOM also spoke to Ansif Ashraf, Executive Director of British Herald to get some insights into their poll. On May 23, 2019, as the 2019 general elections came to an end with a massive victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party and Narendra Modi, British Herald put out a congratulatory tweet with an image of Modi on a magazine cover. The tagline on the cover read- ‘ Narendra Modi- World’s Most Powerful Person’. The tweet itself garnered around 29 retweets and 60 likes at the time of writing this article – barely making any noise. At that time, not much was known about British Herald and the now-famous poll. Fast-forward to June 17, 2019, British Herald posts another tweet with an article written on their website by someone called Harsh Singh, where an explanation was given as to how a reader’s poll conducted by them resulted in Narendra Modi winning the title of ‘World’s Most Powerful Person 2019’. According to the article, British Herald readers had a choice between four names – Donald Trump, Xi Jingping, Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi. Finally it was Modi who emerged victorious as the readers’ choice. However, British Herald failed to mention any details of their readership nor did they provide a sample size and methodology of the poll.