Author Nityanand Misra lashed out on Shekhar Gupta’s ThePrint for distorting and misinterpreting his talk and lying in the report. The author took to Twitter to expose a recent report written by journalist Kritika Sharma for The Print.
[Exposé Thread: keep popcorn ready]
How @ThePrintIndia distorts views and publishes lies
Shared by @RamaNewDelhi, The Prints’s ‘news report’ [sic] by @S_kritika on my talk is a wondrous marvel of journalistic ineptitude and a fantastic display of journalistic disintegrity.
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— Nityānanda Miśra (मिश्रोपाख्यो नित्यानन्दः) (@MisraNityanand) July 7, 2019
The article was also shared by one of its editors, Rama Lakshmi. She went on to compare the author’s mission with that of former Pakistan President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.
The report was about a speech that the author had given at the India International Centre in Delhi last week. Instead, it turned out to be riddled with multiple factual errors and lies.
According to the author, the journalist had denied any misinterpretation and said that she was free to write what she felt. In order to get his words correctly, he had mailed her the presentation. He made repeated requests over phone, email and WhatsApp to run by him the words that were attributed to him. However, despite agreeing to do so, the journalist made no attempt to do so.
Finally, no journalistic ethos. I requested the journalist on phone, email, WhatsApp to run the views attributed to me by me before publishing so that I am not misrepresented. Journalist agreed (“haan, haan”), but then published the report without doing it.
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— Nityānanda Miśra (मिश्रोपाख्यो नित्यानन्दः) (@MisraNityanand) July 7, 2019
In a long Twitter thread, Nityanand Misra exposed the errors in the report one by one. The title of his presentation was “Arabic Persian free Hindi”. Yet the entire report makes no mention of the Persian language.
The author recommends avoiding/minimizing the usage of Arabic-Persian words and use Hindi yet in the report the journalist has conveniently substituted the word “Persian” with “Urdu” at several instances.
The author says he had contrasted the usage of Persian-origin ‘sarkar’ and Sanskrit-origin ‘shashan’/‘prabhutvam’ by different governments. He said he made no mention of Modi. Yet, in order to sensationalize the report, it was written the author the Modi government to be referred to as “Modi shasan” and not “Modi sarkar”.
The journalist had also lied that Misra had advised the BJP.
Report: My talk had advice for BJP saying “namumkin ab mumkin hai” should ideally be “asambhav ab sambhav hai”
Lie. I gave no advice to BJP. My talk had a slide contrasting the Hindi used by BJP and PTI. Journalist seems to have imagined what I spoke based on my slides.
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— Nityānanda Miśra (मिश्रोपाख्यो नित्यानन्दः) (@MisraNityanand) July 7, 2019
Misra alleged that the journalist brought in Hindutva just to sensationalize the report.
The spin: Report brings in Hindutva just to sensationalize, refers to Rajiv Malhotra disparagingly as “controversial Hindutva ideologue” [sic], and says I appear alongside “other Hindutva ideologues” (who?) without mentioning who they mean. Completely unrelated to my talk.
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— Nityānanda Miśra (मिश्रोपाख्यो नित्यानन्दः) (@MisraNityanand) July 7, 2019
Apart from this, the report had plenty of factual errors regarding the authors work, including the number of books he had worked on and the year he had begun working for the promotion of Sanskrit and Hindi.
Misra claimed that the journalist wasn’t even present for the event and had also wrongly reported the number of people who had attended. 40 people had attended the event, yet it was reported that 150 people had attended it.
Towards the end of the report, the journalist has quoted several people who thought that Misra’s idea wouldn’t work. Misra pointed out a specific comment where Sanskrit was portrayed as an oppressive language.
At the end of the thread, the author has said that he had always been suspicious of ThePrint. He was prepared to expose them if needed. Misra said that the presentation was made public and the video would be soon uploaded onto YouTube. He said that anybody could cross-check his words.
Recently, Shekhar Gupta’s The Print pronounced punishment for the convicted in Kathua case even before the court does. The media outlet also published a bogus and statistically inaccurate ‘research’ to claim that retweeting PM Modi increases chances to get Lok Sabha ticket.
