A media house has done it yet again! India Today in myriad instances has managed to generate controversies and false narratives in various ways. This includes getting slammed by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj for a “false and mischievous” report, for issuing a wrong corrigendum and even for writing a suggestive headline while sharing pictures of Shahrukh Khan’s daughter.
Today it seems India Today is trying to fetch yet another badge of honour for concocting false narratives. This time, inventing an innovative lie by twisting a Facebook post by Postcard English.
India Today published an article on 28th July, trying to ‘fact check’ Postcard News. India Today claimed that this photograph was used by Postcard to show how more athletes won medals during the Modi regime as compared to the Congress regime.
Following is a screengrab from the India Today article. India Today follows this picture by saying “The intent is to show that India won fewer medals at the Commonwealth Games held during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime than at the recent one held in Australia and praise the Modi Government as being more sports-friendly”.
However, while Postcard did use the same image they definitely did not beget the angle India Today portrayed.
Postcard used the image to illustrate the body language and the respect the PM now and PM then is displaying towards the winners. In the first picture Manmohan Singh, the PM under UPA regime is sitting while the winners are standing and in the other picture the current PM, Narendra Modi is standing while the winners are seen sitting, trying to compare the demeanour exhibited by the former and current PM towards the achievers.
It is evident that India Today maliciously cropped the post by Post Card in order to ‘fact-check’ them. Essentially, India Today concocted a lie to attribute the lie to Postcard simply to fact check and malign the portal.
OpIndia reached out to Mahesh Hegde to understand why the mainstream media seem to be going after him and his portal. He said “IndiaToday has posted blatant lies about us. Their article amounts to defamation and not journalism. It is hilarious that in a bid to call us out for “fake news”, they have posted one themselves”.
In addition to the innumerable instances, where India Today has created predicaments for itself, Opindia had reported of Twitter users slamming India Today for sharing a video demeaning the use of saree. In yet another episode the India Today Journalist was asked to broadcast an apology for defamatory content during a show aired in 2010, and the list seems to just get longer.
At this point, one can only believe that if oddity occurs for the first time its a mistake, the second time by choice but if done repeatedly it becomes a pattern.
