The fake news plague, widely prevalent in websites like ‘The Wire’ and ‘The Print’, have now hit the mainstream media. Recently, The Hindu intentionally cropped off an internal note of the Ministry of Defence to spread fake and distorted views on the Rafale Deal.
Soon ANI published a full page report of the note which showed that the document was cropped by The Hindu to omit the reply by defence minister Manohar Parrikar to the note.
Read More in the original article : The Hindu deliberately distorts MoD document to spread Fake News on the Rafale Deal
In his reply, which was cropped out by The Hindu to peddle its agenda, Parrikar asked the Defense Secretary to take up the matter with the Pr. Secretary to Prime Minister and resolve the matter.
The event appeared pre-planned. Many congress leaders including Rahul Gandhi and Divya Spandana immediately took the advantage to propagate the fake news. Our secret volunteers in various “Anti-BJP” WhatsApp/Social Media groups reported the fake news was widely shared but the corrected version by ANI was never shared at all.
The Hindu had recently published another fake news claiming more than 1000 trees cut for Modi’s helipad. In reality only 9 small shrubs were removed.
Another massive fake news was released by reputed press bureau IANS. The news was about the unemployment status in India. It reported that more than 11 Million Indians have been unemployed in past 5 Years.
It turned out that the survey was conducted by a Private funded company CMIE Pvt Ltd which has close proximity with Congress leader P. Chidambaram. The survey by CMIE was conducted with less than 1 Lakh people in wiselly chosen cities and villages where unemployment is actually high. The scewed statistics obtained was later scaled according with the population of India. Intentionally distorting the facts to bring a negative image on the government.
The news went viral across the social media. Times of India covered it in the front page. It had a cartoon depicting the unemployment in India. The ‘Bussiness-Standard’ took a step ahead and published the fake news behind a paywall. Clearly with an intention of making monetary benefits out of fake news.
It later turned out that more than 14 Million jobs have been created in past 4.5 Years. 14 Million in Professional and Transport sector alone (Excluding 15.6 Crores Micro-Entrepreneurs created due to the Mudra Scheme). Similar was the case with the “leaked” NSSO report.
The Hindu also reported that the Pariksha Pe Charcha program was scripted. It turned out to be a unverified news.
It was always observed that few media outlets are openly biased against the current government. The extreme poverty in India has reduced from 25% in 2014 to 5% in 2018. (Read Here and here) Many researchers claim the advancement was due to reduction in “money leakage” in subsidies with the help of “Direct Tranfer” of money. Times of India and the Financial Express were the only two news papers to cover this. More than 73 Lakh houses were sanctioned for the homeless in the past 4 Years under PM Awas Yojana. Out of which 36.7 Lakh houses have already been built and delivered.
The fake news propaganda, especially by the print media, is dangerous to the democratic fabric of the nation. And as of now the ruling Party BJP has been the biggest victim.
The Author is a research Scholar at IIT Madras. He was one of the founding member of South Asian Express and The Awakened Indian. You can reach him on twitter at @Dheeraj_M_Pai
