The Wire has issued a half-hearted apology after it was caught spreading fake news that claimed that the National Commission for Protection of Children Rights (NCPCR) has said that it has seen an 8-fold rise in the complaints post lockdown. Now, the claim has been retracted after the author of the article said that she had no evidence to support her stunning claim.
In a note, The Wire added that the article “has been edited to delete the claim made by the author that there had been an eight-fold increase in the number of complaints handled by the NCPCR following the lockdown.” The author, too, came up with a bizarre justification for the apparent ‘error’.
She said, “The author attended a webinar where the deliberation was regarding the increasing number of child abuse cases, and in this context, the chairperson of the NCPCR mentioned that the capacity of the institution has increased eight-fold for handling increasing cases/complaints of child abuse. I construed this statement to mean actual complaints had increased eight-fold after the outbreak of coronavirus. However, as I have no data in hand to substantiate that observation, I apologise and request it be deleted.”
The Press Information Bureau had immediately fact-checked the dubious claims made by the leftist propaganda website. It said that the National Commission for Protection of Children Rights (NCPCR) has categorically denied the 8-folds increase in the complaint. It said that NCPCR has denied the wrong information being circulated and warned people against misleading reports quoting incorrect facts.
The clarification issued by The Wire does give one the impression that the author suffers from comprehension issues. It also reflects extremely poorly on The Wire that they ran such a shocking claim without bothering to actually verify the news. But it is something people have come to expect from the leftist propagandist at the portal.
“In the previous year, the NCPCR addressed around 5,000 complaints; post-outbreak (beginning March 2020), this has increased about 8-fold” the article had said. It appears that the author was so overeager to paint the government in poor light that she portrayed an increased capacity to deal with crimes as rise in actual crimes. Thus, effectively, she converted a positive development into a negative one due to her aversion towards the government.
The Wire has often published such malicious lies in order to sway public mood against the government. In the past, it had maliciously misrepresented facts to project the Indian Railways in poor light and claimed that 3 out of 4 ‘fact-checks’ by PIB were ‘unsubstantiated’.
The Wire also lied about the ventilators which were received in a donation by Gujarat government. It alleged that the firm from which the Modi government procured the ventilators had close ties to the BJP leaders and insinuated that the payment of which might have been made by the PM Cares fund.
