Ravish Kumar, the controversial NDTV journalist is no stranger to Fake News, considering he himself has in the past been accused of spreading it. We had reported as to how he in a blog had lied about what he had asked Kiran Bedi in an interview. Later he had also reportedly mislead his audiences by hiding the Congress background of a trader in a possible bid to attack demonetisation.
Now it seems that the tables have somewhat turned and Ravish Kumar himself has become a victim of Fake News. This news though wasn’t spread by his so called “Right Wing” critics and was actually carried by a leftist youtube channel.
In a Facebook post written by Ravish, he claimed that a statement defaming the Prime Minister was wrongly attributed to him. The statement claimed that, he (Ravish Kumar) was sad that a Thug like Modi is the Nation’s Prime Minister. He also affixed screenshots of the sources which had carried this alleged statement and one of it was a video carried by a certain Krantikari Indian Youtube Channel:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1N8pB0U7lo?rel=0]
Going through the Krantikaari Indian’s videos it becomes clear that almost all their videos attacker either Modi, BJP or the RSS. Hence this video particular video too was most probably designed to do the same. This video went viral and currently has about 737,000 views and was also shared by Congress leader Digvijaya Singh:
मुझे दुख हैं मोदी जैसा गुंडा मेरा प्रधान मंत्री है Angry Ravish Kumar spmmm
https://t.co/NWMjsp1VoW— digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) September 8, 2017
The video in question simply carries a speech Ravish Kumar gave at the Press Club of India after the Murder of Gauri Lankesh. In the speech he is chiefly seen attacking Modi for following a Twitter user who used a derogatory word against Gauri Lankesh after her death. In the video Ravish also used a lot of unsubstantiated rhetoric to further his agenda.
The Youtube video though as claimed by Ravish had no such statement by him calling the PM a gunda. Even though Ravish had used that particular word (at 9:02), it looked to be in a reference to pro BJP panellists in Primetime News Debates and not the Prime Minister. In the explanatory post Ravish Kumar also claimed that this fake news was an attempt to defame him.
Soon after Ravish’s explanation, Digvijaya Singh too said sorry to him for his tweet:
रवीश ने प्रधान मंत्री के प्रति कोई अपशब्द का उपयोग नहीं किया यूट्यूब पर जो रवीश का भाषण था वह मैंने ट्वीट किया था। रवीश जी क्षमा करें।
— digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) September 8, 2017
This whole episode is ironic considering the fact that even though Ravish Kumar regularly speaks about Fake News carried by the so called Right Wing news websites, but this may be the 1st time he has broken his silence about Fake News spread by the left, now that it was he who was at the receiving end of it.
