On July 3, Alt News co-founder Muhammed Zubair was sent to 14-days of judicial custody by Patiala House Court. Zubair has been accused of hurting religious sentiments, allegedly accepting donations from countries like Pakistan and Syria, and the Police are also probing if he was running any kind of nexus online to push an agenda on social media. Amid the array of allegations against the so-called fact-checker, the professional ‘whitewashers of the crimes’ have come to save the day for Zubair.
The News Minute has described him as some superior gully cricketer who had spent his younger days being the one who would call everyone to play cricket on the weekends. According to TNM, Zubair was never interested in politics before 2014. The portal seemed to have talked to his friends and colleagues, who claimed they do not recall any instance where he had shown interest in fact-checking and politics.
Suggesting he was a telecom engineer, TNM said he left his “comfortable life” to “draw attention towards misinformation”. Interestingly, Zubair himself ran a parody page where he “satirically” spread misleading information using the name of BJP leader Subramanyam Swamy. It was only after Swamy threatened him with consequences that he added the word “unofficial” to the Facebook page. This is not something we are claiming, but it was written in TNM’s report.
Eldest of the siblings, someone who was told by his father to “be an example” for his siblings, a quiet and studious person who was the “first to graduate in his family”. This is how portals like TNM and The Quint have described Zubair in their attempts to whitewash the alleged crimes he has committed.
Interestingly, knowingly or unknowingly, The Quint pointed out how strong the ecosystem is of which Zubair is a part. It said, and we quote, “Many had come out in support of Zubair, including followers of his work, leaders from several opposition parties, as well as international journalist networks. #IStandWithZubair was trending at number 1 on Twitter globally just hours after his arrest.”
Within hours of his arrest, the ecosystem managed to trend demand for his release on Twitter. Zubair, a person who was literally nothing in the political arena before 2014, became so strong in just eight years that a whole cabal of the international ecosystem came running to rescue him from the Indian legal system.
The Hindu, while profiling him, started their report with a quote from an interview that Zubair had given in October 2021. It read, “They cannot file a complaint against me for writing a story because we have facts with us in our stories.” Well, this is not the first time someone has claimed that Zubair or Alt News do not lie or spread misinformation. However, OpIndia documented ‘the tip of the iceberg’ by making a list of 20 instances where Zubair was caught red-handed, and he had to either apologise or simply delete the fake claims he made quietly. The list was prepared for Shiv Sena leader Priyanka Chaturvedi after she demanded to show one instance where Zubair had spread fake news.
The Hindu even moved a step forward and mentioned Zubair and Pratik Sinha’s so-called Nobel Prize nomination by the director of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo. Interestingly, the author who wrote the profile missed mentioning that PRIO’s list was unofficial, and the institute itself says that the list the director releases every year has literally no impact on the nominations for the Nobel Prize.
Everyone, including these three portals and media houses, has questioned the arrest because of the tweet that was posted in 2018. Five years have passed, and according to them, it is not an old tweet that should not be dug. Interestingly, many of them have targeted filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri for his old tweets to mock him for his current stand for Hindu rights.
The Quint wrote, “A day after Zubair’s arrest, PM Modi signed the ‘2022 Resilient Democracies Statement’ along with G7 countries in Germany pledging to “protecting the freedom of expression and opinion online and offline”. Many commentators pointed out the irony.” The irony is not what PM said. The irony is The Quint is pointing fingers at the arrest of Zubair but completely missing out on the point that if that is the case, the Halla bol against Nupur Sharma should also have never happened. What PM said should apply to each and everyone irrespective of his or her caste, religion, race, gender and more.
How media houses have whitewashed crimes in the past
This is not the first time a media house or a left-liberal portal has tried to whitewash the crimes. Newslaundry, in 2021, was accused of misquoting Sreedathan, the founder and managing director of the website Indus Scrolls in a quest to whitewash the terror links of the Islamist organisation Popular Front of India (PFI) member and ‘dubious’ journalist Siddique Kappan, who was arrested in UP for conspiring to create communal tension in Hathras.
The Quint whitewashed Delhi anti-Hindu riots and accused Shahrukh Pathan, who had brandished a gun at the Police and threatened them. The writer of Pathan’s profile romanticised his criminal act. “Unfazed by the policemen in riot gear, he shot bullets in the air while media persons captured his acts in astonishment. The fact that the gym enthusiast, who was also a local, did not wear a mask to hide his identity made his ‘bravado’ seem peculiar and odd,” the author said. It also brings in his family because there is nothing like showing him as a regular ‘biryani loving guy’. The Quint does not even try too hard to break the stereotypes.
Not to forget, the same portal, which claims to be the actual flag bearers of liberty, has portrayed terrorists like Osama Bin Laden as magnanimous and great saints like Swami Vivekananda as an ordinary “cigar-smoking monk”! Similarly, terrorist Burhan Wani was championed as the son of a teacher.
