Early morning on 19th August, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari tweeted two pictures saying these are sent to him by a friend claiming these are the roads are from the Indian side to Doklam and are in “pathetic” condition:
Photographs sent by a friend from ground zero.Doklam from the Indian side- and the pathetic condition of the road -that should be fixed ASAP pic.twitter.com/5tSRx87JkN
— Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) August 18, 2017
Seeing the pictures, Bhutanese journalist Tenzing Lamsang quoted the tweet and called it as final stretch of road to Doklam, which could be in Sikkim:
Final stretch of road to Doklam from the Indian side in Sikkim https://t.co/oFCNU47gDL
— Tenzing Lamsang (@TenzingLamsang) August 20, 2017
In subsequent tweet, he clarified that his tweet about probable place where the picture might be clicked was based on the photograph tweeted by the Congress spokesperson. That he was just making an educated guess:
Just to clarify I am only basing my retweet on tweet & pic by @ManishTewari . Also not a source of the pic. Am comfortably based in Thimphu
— Tenzing Lamsang (@TenzingLamsang) August 20, 2017
He said he it could be last stretch of road from Indian side based on the vegetation seen in the picture:
Based on @ManishTewari tweet&picture which says it is on Indian side (Sikkim) my conclusion is it is final stretch due to alpine vegetation
— Tenzing Lamsang (@TenzingLamsang) August 20, 2017
Tewari immediately held on to the first tweeet by Lamsang and said how the Bhutanese journalist “confirmed” that this is Indian road:
–@TheSanjivKapoor https://t.co/cDNpQkMLAv . Hope you saw tweet by @TenzingLamsang Editor of the Bhutanese-NP confirming it as an Indian Road pic.twitter.com/b3cJIEmhAT
— Manish Tewari (@ManishTewari) August 20, 2017
He conveniently missed out the part where the picture was sent to him “by his friend on ground”. It was now somehow the responsibility of the Bhutanese journalist, even though he had clarified that he was ‘comfortably based’ in Thimpu and not confirming anything about the ground situation in or around Doklam.
Soon, Times of India, in its 21st August edition printed the above picture claiming Bhutanese journalist Tenzing Lamsang tweeted the said picture.
Tenzing Lamsang even tweeted to Times of India about the error, giving them benefit of doubt that they might have assumed he tweeted the picture since Congress Spokesperson Manish Tewari had retweeted his tweet:
@timesofindia error.Retweet by me of actual @ManishTewari tweet who said road frm Indian side.I said final stretch due to alpine vegetation pic.twitter.com/kSXh6FaMMt
— Tenzing Lamsang (@TenzingLamsang) August 21, 2017
But that still wasn’t enough. Not only did Times of India not acknowledge the error, their news channel, Times Now, even ran an exclusive video of how they have access to Indian side of Doklam giving ‘credit’ to Tenzing Lamsang for the pictures:
#TNExclusive: TIMES NOW accesses exclusive visuals of Chinese Army vehicles moving in the Doklam sector in Sikkim pic.twitter.com/uuAyKCf022
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) August 21, 2017
In their defence, they did say how Times Now cannot verify these images, which they claimed were of Chinese army vehicles moving inside Doklam region.
(Please note, the narrative has changed from exclusive image of Indian side of Doklam to Chinese army invading Indian side of Doklam – all over unverified images.)
Tenzing Lamsang, on his side, cried himself hoarse that Times of India has got the story completely wrong, but it all fell on deaf ears.
In a Facebook post, he lashed out against The Times of India for misreporting on Bhutan:
He even requested Times of India and Times Now to correct their “blunder” but no such correction seems to have been made.
@TimesNow & @timesofindia I take no pleasure in correcting you guys but this is too big a blunder to ignore . Please correct it. Thank you
— Tenzing Lamsang (@TenzingLamsang) August 21, 2017
At a time when Doklam is a sensitive issue concerning India, such casual attitude of a leading media house is really unfortunate.
