The present state of mainstream media is where logic comes to die, propaganda reigns supreme and where irony gets so depressed by the constant outrages that it is shamed to death. Imagine a world where cats hold a round table discussion over who sneaked the fish fry, where Venezuela decides to hold classes on the world economy and ISIS plans a summer course on religious tolerance and women’s rights. Well, to be honest, that world is not so difficult to imagine because if the so-called liberals had their way, those events might actually occur.
Election season in India is another such wonderland. We have Mamata Banerjee accusing others of killing democracy, we have Rahul Gandhi preaching that he will bring justice for the poor and we have NDTV claiming to bust fake news.
Yes, you heard that right. NDTV, whose star anchors ran discussions over the half-baked lies that the government is changing default AC temperatures, is running a show where they claim to bust fake news. And they are running the said ‘fake news busting show’ with Dhruv Rathee, the pro-AAP YouTuber. Irony must have jumped from the rooftop of Herald House.
Tonight at 7 | Watch YouTuber @Dhruv_rathee on busting fake news in this election season on https://t.co/Fbzw6mR9Q5 and NDTV 24×7 pic.twitter.com/Yoih41EUUq
— NDTV (@ndtv) April 27, 2019
The show featuring Dhruv Rathee had first aired on April 22, just two days before Dhruv Rathee peddled his latest fake news. On April 24, Rathee peddled a fake claim that PM Modi had lied in his interview with Akshay Kumar that he used to wash his own clothes till he became the CM of Gujarat.
The lie spread by Rathee and several other dubious fact-checkers like him was soon debunked by Twitter users, who had pointed out that the very article they had shared had mentioned that the person presented as PM Modi’s washerman was a laundryman near the RSS office in Godhra and he used to iron the clothes of the then RSS worker Modi and other members during their stay in the town. Popular twitter user Ankur Singh had caught Rathee and others spreading the lie.
Pic 1: Propaganda by Dhruv Rathee
Pic 2: Propaganda by Alt News co-founder
Pic 3: Propaganda article by Fake News Website
Pic 4- Truth
Link- Article of 2014, not updated recently https://t.co/VXoQjk9DKQ pic.twitter.com/VbXTyXdN06
— Chowkidar Ankur Singh (@iAnkurSingh) April 25, 2019
This was just one of the many, many lies, the NDTV-certified fake news buster has been caught spreading. Recently, Rathee had claimed that PM Modi has ‘sold’ 1,70,000 acres of dense forest in Chhattisgarh to the Adani Group. After the Adani Group debunked his claim and stated that they would initiate legal proceedings if Rathee does not take down his “malicious and incorrect” claim, Rathee promptly deleted the Tweet.
Dhruv Rathee’s claims and narratives seem to go beyond political inclination. He is known to spread deliberate lies and fake claims. Recently, he had also mocked former Goa CM Manohar Parrikar’s death due to cancer. He has also been sued recently by a BJP volunteer Vikas Pandey for making false allegations against him. Dhruv Rathee, propaganda in chief, had also peddled some asinine, wild theory to undermine the Statue of Unity after it was inaugurated and had spoken in the same language as the Pulwama terrorist. In fact, a pro-AAP blogger close to Dhruv Rathee was caught spreading fake news after the Pulwama terrorist attack and the police had even filed a case against him.
However, Rathee being hired by NDTV is something as natural as an alien spacecraft being welcomed to dock in the mother ship hovering in space. Looking at the level of propaganda and drivel that NDTV runs, Rathee must have been a real attraction for them. It is only the union of two renowned fake news peddlers to ‘bust fake-news’ that is the biggest joke here.
NDTV has been setting the gold standard in fake news peddling in recent years. Last year, NDTV had deliberately misquoted PM Modi’s speech and had claimed that the PM had said Congress is seeking an early resolution to the Ayodhya case. Twitter users had pointed out that the PM had said the exact opposite.
NDTV’s Nidhi Razdan, a serial fake news peddler herself, had recently jumped in to share the news that had claimed that the NIA judge who acquitted Swami Aseemanand in the Mecca Masjid blast case had joined the BJP. Many ‘journalists’ and ‘intellectuals’ were left red-faced when it was pointed out that the person joining the BJP was Congress working president of Chhattisgarh and not the judge.
NDTV had also spread falsehood regarding the Vande Bharat express and PM Modi’s statement. NDTV’s hatred for the BJP government is so intense that they rush to tarnish anything positive happening under the Modi government. When the Bogibeel bridge was inaugurated in December last year, NDTV had peddled a narrative that boatmen are going to lose jobs.
Their hypocrisy was called out by many on social media.
The deep-rooted love between NDTV and fake news is so intense that once they had made an entire news report mistaking a parody account of Abhishek Bachchan as real. They had also run an entire debate based on a piece of fake news that the government of India is going to fix portion sizes of meals served in restaurants.
Perhaps the union of Dhruv Rathee and NDTV is destiny after all, like a river eventually merging with the sea, individual fake news peddlers probably have to merge one day with the ocean of lies and fake news that is NDTV. Raveesh Kumar is already suffering from Acute Modi Hatred Syndrome as explained in the video here, with Nidhi Razdan already there and now Rathee joining them, NDTV will be a sanctuary where all Modi haters will find a safe haven and share each other’s sorrows.
The only next level of this wonder can be Digvijay Singh’s pet troll Abhishek Mishra collaborating with The Wire to find out why chickens in Modi’s India are giving birth to puppies.
