As soon as news trickled in that Urjit Patel, the RBI Governor has resigned, with immediate effect, citing personal reasons, the rumour mills of mainstream media and politically motivated elements started running over time.
After giving the resignation of Urjit Patel a political colour, journalists and even news agencies started spreading rumours of the Deputy Governor, Viral Acharya, resigning from his post as well.
The first person who started the rumour was abusive “journalist” Swati Chaturvedi. She alleged that Viral Acharya was also going to quit.
Viral Acharya will also quit. Thank you @PMOIndia for destroying a 70 long years of RBI autonomy https://t.co/9Iy8mLZcEK
— Swati Chaturvedi (@bainjal) 10 December 2018
Once Swati Chaturvedi floated the conspiracy theory, immediately, a portal called NewsD ran a full-fledged story alleging that Viral Acharya, the Deputy Governor had resigned as well. Ex-NDTV journalist, Rajan Mahan shared the NewsD “news link”.
Following the trend, several journalists tweeted furthering the same unverified news.
Pro-AAP ‘journalist’ Ashutosh Mishra furthered the same lie.
Veteran “journalist” Barkha Dutt too joined the party.
A journalist called Aadesh Rawal, who works for Pankaj Pachauri, former PM Manmohan Singh’s media advisor shared the same fake news.
Dhruv Rathee, a famous YouTuber who is also known for spreading fake news wasn’t to be left behind.
Other than journalists who spread the lie on social media platform, Twitter, after NewsD even MoneyLife had published a report that asserted that Viral Acharya had resigned as the RBI Deputy Governor.
It was no surprise since the managing editor of Moneylife, Sucheta Dalal was herself spreading the fake news on Twitter.
Pro-Congress website NewsCentral24x7 also published a story furthering the same lie.
The article by NewsCentral24x7 was soon pulled down but the archived version is still available.
Following the “journalists” even politicians were not too far behind. Congress’ national spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi too, tweeted about the Governor and Deputy Governor of RBI resigning.
However, the truth was far from it. After the entire “liberal” ecosystem had spread the lie and created panic, the RBI spokesperson issued a statement asserting that the Deputy Governor Viral Acharya had not resigned from his post and had no intention of doing so either.
Media reports of RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya’s resignation are incorrect: RBI Spokesperson pic.twitter.com/MESzQxY0zJ
— ANI (@ANI) December 10, 2018
The resignation of high ranking officials of the RBI is the kind of development that could potentially send the financial markets in a tizzy. For journalists to be irresponsible with the fact is not new, but certainly is shocking.
