Fact Check: Message attributing Radio Garden to ISRO goes viral again

New Delhi, Jun 23: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is hub for space technology which pursues space science research and planetary exploration.

Now a message has gone viral claiming that ISRO has developed a radio portal called Radio Garden. This enable people to listen to stations from across the world.

"Dear all, list to world wide radio from ISRO. When you click the link you can see the globe rotating. There are green dots on which you simply touch and you can start listening to live radio from that place. Simply amazing," the viral message reads.

Incidentally this is the second time that such a message has been in circulation and has been busted by fact checkers in the past as well.

OneIndia checked on the internet to see if ISRO has come up with something like this. We were unable to find any reports relating to the Radio Garden developed by ISRO.

However we found a website called Radio Garden based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was designed and developed by Studio Puckey and Moniker in 2016 and was commissioned by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Radio Garden enables to listen to several radio stations live from various countries.

We also searched for Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. It says that Radio Garden is the outcome of Transnational Radio Encounters a research project on the influence of radio on transformational forms of culture and identity. This project is financially supported by the HERA Joint Research programme.

After searching further, we found an article in the Guardian which said, the app, the brainchild of the Amsterdam-based studios Puckey and Moniker. launched in 2016. It was originally commissioned as a temporary project by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision as part of research looking at how radio has fostered "transnational encounters". It started out as a a web-only offering, but has been available as an app since 2018.

When this claim had gone viral in 2017, The New Indian Express had reported, Radio Garden is a portal that connects about 8,000 stations around the world and broadcasts it to anyone willing to listen. Although the ISRO has plenty under its belt for any Indian to take pride in, the Radio Garden, sadly, isn't one of them.
The PIB Fact Check also said that this claim is fake and no such radio portal has been developed by ISRO.

A message claiming that @isro has developed a radio portal called "Radio Garden" that enables people to listen to stations from across the world is circulating on social media. #PIBFactCheck

▶️This claim is #FAKE.
▶️No such radio portal has been developed by #ISRO pic.twitter.com/oPJi3mvVZ0

— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) June 23, 2022

We did check the ISRO's website as well, but found no information about Radio Garden. Hence we concluded that the claim that Radio Garden was developed by ISRO is false.