Hours after BJP IT Cell Head Amit Malviya announced that he would file civil and criminal proceedings against ‘The Wire’, the leftist publication desperately tried to distance itself from its fake Meta stories.
In an article titled ‘BJP’s Amit Malviya to Sue The Wire Over Meta Stories’, The Wire shamelessly gave itself a clean chit and shrewdly passed on the blame to its ‘lead investigator’, Devesh Kumar.
“On October 10, The Wire had published the first of four articles (all now retracted) claiming that Meta, the parent company of Instagram, had granted Malviya the ability to take down posts he objected to by not subjecting complaints he filed to review by the company,” it initially conceded making unsolicited defamatory remarks against the BJP IT Cell Head without evidence.
While ‘lamenting’ editorial oversight, The Wire remarked,” (We) noted that a member of its Meta investigation team had deceived the publication with inauthentic material.”
The leftist propaganda website then blamed the embarrassing Meta fiasco on a lack of technological understanding and, in the process, exonerated itself for its shoddy journalistic practices and allowing its ‘confirmation bias’ against Amit Malviya and the BJP to take the leave of its good senses. It evoked journalistic practices such as reliance on source-based stories to suggest that its tranche of fake stories was nothing short of typical media investigation.
“Journalists rely on sources for stories and do their best to verify the material they receive. Technological evidence is more complicated and the usual due diligence may not always reveal the fraud perpetrated upon a publication. This is what happened to us,” The Wire absolved itself of any deliberate wrongdoing.
Although the leftist publication is not new to propagating fake stories, it claimed that the Meta fiasco was one of the rarest occasions where it had misinformed the public. And even then, The Wire managed to play the victim card and allege that it was defrauded by its lead investigator.
For over 10 months now—since the time Tek Fog stories by The Wire were first published in The Wire—Siddharth Varadarajan and at least 4 other writers at his organisation took byline for the reports. When they are finally exposed for their lies and propaganda, Varadarajan conveniently passes the buck on his lead investigator and projects himself as a victim of the deception.
While Varadarajan and The Wire would want us to believe that they are victims of the said fiascos, it is worth noting that the frauds were committed by the writers employed by the organisation, working expressly under the supervision of Varadarajan, and being endorsed by the publication. By claiming that its writers acted in an independent capacity, that they created fake photoshops and uploaded them on private blogs with The Wire’s logo, Varadarajan and company are simply trying to sidestep from their duty of owning up to their mistakes and scapegoating their employees to take the fall for the frauds committed at an organisational level.
“Whether the person who brought all the material to The Wire deceived us at anyone else’s behest or acted on his own is a matter that will be subjected to judicial process in due course,” said the leftist rag, refusing to own the responsibility of maligning Meta and Amit Malviya.
The Wire reiterated its stance of being the victim in the Meta saga despite being the purveyor of malicious, defamatory content against Amit Malviya. “The malintent to discredit The Wire is obvious,” it stated while commenting on the civil and criminal proceedings initiated against it.
The top management of ‘The Wire’ cannot wash off its hands from the guilt of misleading its readers and leading an anti-India campaign. The founding Editor Siddharth Vardarajan was the author of one of the four retracted stories about Meta.
It would make things easier if Wire can share exactly which paragraph, sentence, word or punctuation was added/edited by these two luminaries to get a byline.
— shashi (@devzoy) October 28, 2022
They had to have made some kind of contribution to have their name.
I hope my understanding of bylines is correct.
It is interesting that The Wire is now blaming its ‘reporting team’ for the fake story even though Varadarajan was named as co-author in some of the stories. This makes the editor part of the ‘reporting team’.
And thus the attempt to pass on the blame to the accused Devesh reflects a clear lack of ethical conduct at the organisational level. No wonder, it holds true for their recent intellectually dishonest ‘apology note’.
Amit Malviya to sue ‘The Wire’ for damage to his reputation
On Thursday (October 27), Amit Malviya decided to pursue criminal and civil proceedings against the leftist propaganda outlet The Wire over their fake reporting targeting the BJP leader.
The Wire, founded by American citizen Siddarth Varadarajan, alleged that Amit Malviya was given access by Facebook’s parent company Meta to delete anti-BJP posts from Facebook and Instagram.
After the leftist rag’s claims fell flat in the face of technical scrutiny, they tried to fabricate evidence in the shape of forged emails. When those claims were revealed to be frauds, The Wire withdrew their reports.
On The Wire… pic.twitter.com/ElZNC9yVuO
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) October 27, 2022
Amit Malviya, who had been maintaining a stoic silence throughout this saga, informed on Thursday that he would pursue the case against The Wire legally. The decision was based on the recommendations of his lawyers.
