The leftist propaganda website ‘The Wire’ might be in a tight spot again, with the Editor of Sunday Guardian threatening to take legal action against the portal for allegedly spreading rumours and falsehood against the daily, SundayGuardian, MD Nalapat and herself.
‘The Wire’, in one of its recent articles, headlined ‘Despite an increasingly censored mediascape, hope for change remains’, had made certain allegations which the Editor of the Sunday Guardian, Joyeeta Basu has strongly refuted and condemned warning ‘The Wire’ with legal consequences.
Atul Dev, a writer working with The Caravan, previously working for The Sunday Guardian said in the article published by ‘The Wire’ – “My first job was at the Sunday Guardian as a feature writer. Towards the end of the year that I worked there, Joyeeta Basu and M.D. Nalapat were killing stories every week that was even slightly critical of the BJP government. To sit in editorial meetings with them was torturous, so I quit. The fake story on Kathua rape that they published in their opinion pages recently came as no surprise to me, it’s the logical conclusion of the prevailing editorial practice in that paper.”
Joyeeta Basu, Editor with the Sunday Guardian strongly refuted these claims. In fact, ‘took offence at such a charge made’. She claimed that ‘The Wire’ did not print the emails she wrote to them, misrepresenting her side of the story and the clarification she had provided.
Wire printed some accusations against @SundayGuardian@MD_Nalapat and me in one of their latest pieces. First, they did not print the full email I had sent them. I had sent two. Mr Nalapat too had sent emails. I will post the screenshots of the email trails after reaching office.
— Joyeeta Basu (@eeta) May 11, 2018
Dev accused that every page of the features section was screened by Joyeeta Basu before it could be sent to the press by the features team: “So despite our best intentions, we had to engage with their ideas about what is printable and what is not every week”,
Basu, refuting those claims said that as the editor of the paper she was just doing her job and no one should have a problem with that.
As editor my job is to screen every page of the paper. Every full stop, every comma, if humanly possible. And if that is portrayed as censorship, then I am afraid it is being done with mala fide intent. As I had told the reporter, if falsehood is spread we will take legal action.
— Joyeeta Basu (@eeta) May 11, 2018
This is not the first time that ‘The Wire’ this predicament for itself. Earlier too they had published a report on its website that alleged financial misconduct on part of Piyush Goyal in the transaction related to him selling his investment in a private firm, to the Piramal Group. The Piramal Group had also made a statement on the allegations made by The Wire, calling them ‘baseless’ and ‘devoid of any merit’. Piramal Group, contemplated immediate and appropriate measures, including defamatory action against the ‘malicious article’ published in ‘The Wire’.
The media portal is also fighting a defamation case worth Rs. 100 crores for a report it published against Jay Shah, son of Amit Shah. We had exposed the inaccuracies in that report as well.
Recently, Opindia.com had preemptively busted ‘The Wire’s’ impending hitjob against Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. A source had informed us that ‘The Wire’ was planning to target him, by trying to establish a link between his daughter’s legal firm and scam ridden Mehul Choksi’s Geetanjali Gems Limited.
It is rather concerning that this constant endeavor of sensationalizing stories by ‘The Wire’ is forever escalating. It is time ‘The Wire’ stops doing political hitjobs and starts doing some real journalism. It is perhaps time they understand that real journalism demands to bring out all facets of the story honestly. To have an undying pursuit of truth and facts without casting aspersions, sensationalizing stories and raising conjectures.
