The #MeToo movement has gathered steam in India and several powerful people have been outed. Women have come out in scores to narrative their ordeal of sexual harassment and workplace harassment suffered at the hands of men in power. Among those accused, were several members of the All India Bakchod (AIB) comedy team, media persons, actor Alok Nath and even politicians like MJ Akbar.
Several media houses, including Opindia.com, have doggedly reported many of the stories. The leftist propaganda website The Wire, in fact, tweeted an entire thread of their articles covering the #MeToo movement.
However, there is a catch.
In the entire thread tweeted by The Wire, it conspicuously misses out two vital names against whom allegations of sexual harassment were hurled.
In the course of the last few days, two women came forward and accused The Wire’s co-founder and founding editor Siddharth Bhatia. In another instance, a woman took to Facebook and accused the editor of Congress mouthpiece National Herald of sexual harassment. The victim also questioned whether Congress would now throw out the concerned editor.
The Wire, while sharing a link to their “extensive coverage” of the #MeToo movement has conspicuously failed to mention their own editor who has been accused in the #MeToo campaign.
Siddharth Bhatia took to Twitter after the allegations and denied the charges made against him. As did many others who The Wire has covered. One wonders why what is good for the goose is not good for the gander. If The Wire thought covering those stories were appropriate, why then would they leave out the names of their own founding editor and that of the Congress mouthpiece National Herald.
The Wire has had a complicated relationship with the truth thus far. The publication is known to peddle half-truths and whole lies as a force of habit with a long list to their credit. The Wire, which is being sued for defamation often publish articles that read like Hurriyat press statements. Their article has in the past incited violence. They were recently slammed by the CBEC for peddling fake news. They were blamed by a stand-up comedian for spreading lies in his name. Have peddled ‘data’ from dubious organisations. Was slammed by cricketer Mohammad Kaif for bringing caste into cricket. Has a video series that regularly obfuscates. Its journalists are abusive trolls and people who share communally sensitive fake news. They have in the past tried to rationalise the 1993 bomb blast. Conducted a hit job against Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Defended Chidambaram’s 20:80 gold scheme that benefitted private players like scamster Mehul Choksi. The Wire is a portal where the Editors tell their journalists to not out “Dalit activists” who heckled her. Where their contributors are accused of sexual harassment and their journalist’s conduct drove a female journalist to commit suicide. They had shamelessly compared the Indian Army General to General Dyer.
Earlier, Rahul Gandhi had shared The Wire’s comprehensively debunked hit job on Piyush Goyal with some caustic comments without realising his self-goal perhaps. He is no stranger to self-goals too. They had conducted a hit job against Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah hitjob which was debunked by us comprehensively and the portal responsible for that hitjob is facing a 100 crore defamation suit, in which the court has already mentioned that a prima facie case exists against the portal. They had also recently conducted a hit job against Amit Shah which was debunked by us.
It is apparent that The Wire’s editorial standards are near absent. After all, it is run by an Editor who had earlier shelved the Robert Vadra land scam story for 7 months for no good reason. This latest lie is just a reflection of their integrity.
In fact, not so long ago he had done exactly the same when we at OpIndia have preemptively busted an imminent hitjob against the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley. After our article, ‘The Wire’ had conceded that “there was not much of a story to pursue after all“, which is why they had dropped the story after receiving a response from Jaitley and his daughter’s firm. Mr Rahul Gandhi had then proceeded to plug the very article where ‘The Wire’ had admitted to no impropriety on the part of Arun Jaitley, in a bid to tarnish his image. We had then also speculated whether Rahul Gandhi actually knew of the imminent hitjob.
It is surprising, that after the numerous lies that have been called out, The Wire still pretends to hold the moral high ground as far as journalistic standards are concerned. Similarly, it also surprising that while their own founding editor has been accused of harassment, The Wire is now taking the moral high ground by not only claiming that they are ‘extensively covering’ the #MeToo campaign but doing so while brazenly omitting to mention their editor.
