On October 31, Bloomberg retracted the column on Tek Fog. For those unaware, the “imaginary” application The Wire claimed Bharatiya Janata Party uses to “manipulate” social media. The Wire retracted several reports on Tek Fog after its stories on Meta fell apart. One of the Meta stories authors, The Wire’s tech expert, had co-authored Tek Fog stories.
Tek Fog does not exist. The Wire’s claims about it were false.
Notably, The Wire pulled down Meta stories after the documents they presented as proof were proven fabricated. According to a complaint filed by The Wire, the author, Devesh Kumar, allegedly accepted he fabricated documents in Meta stories.
Bloomberg’s statement
In a statement, the media house said, “Bloomberg retracted an opinion column on India’s Tek Fog after the Wire removed a series of articles referenced in the piece.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Ruth Pollard is a Bloomberg Opinion editor. Previously she was South and Southeast Asia government team leader at Bloomberg News and Middle East correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald.”
The story that Bloomberg published is available on Archive.org that can be accessed from here.
Newslaundry also pulled down an interview done on Tek Fog. It said, “Newslaundry has taken down this interview in light of the Wire removing the series from public view.”
Editor’s Guild has retracted its remarks on Tek Fog after The Wire pulled the plug on the reports.
Moneylife also retracted a report and said, “Since the Wire has removed stories on Tek Fog as part of their internal review following serious questions on the veracity of their reporting, for the sake of brevity, we have unpublished this article.”
Media houses continue to peddle Tek Fog lies
Interestingly, The Washington Post published a report that Bloomberg retracted Tek Fog stories, but the media house itself continued to peddle Tek Fog lies. The report on The Washington Post dated January 12, 2022, titled “India’s Tek Fog Shrouds an Escalating Political War”, is up and running. There has been no mention anywhere that The Wire has retracted the stories on which WaPo wrote the piece.
The case is the same with The Print. The story was published on January 13 and titled “Tek Fog shrouds an escalating political war, firms need to retake control of technologies”. Notably, both WaPo and The Print pulled the story from Bloomberg.
Times Of India under TOI+ had published the same story from Bloomberg. It is available with the title “Tek Fog shrouds an escalating political war”.
NDTV published the story on January 13, which is available with the title “Opinion: BJP Accused Of Using App Tek Fog To Target, Intimidate Critics”.
These four media houses published the story from Bloomberg’s syndicated feed and have yet to retract it.
The Logical Indian published a report on January 7 on the matter. The story’s title was “Tek Fog: The Wire’s Investigation Reveals BJP Using The App To Temper Social Media Trends”. It continued to stay online by the time this report was published.
Quartz published a story on Tek Fog on January 6 titled “Right-wing Indians have their app to manipulate WhatsApp and Twitter”. The media house has taken no action following the retraction of the stories by The Wire.
The Quint also failed to act on The Wire’s retraction of the story. A report published on January 6 continues to run on its platform.
The Wire was forced to retract its false reports after their lies on Meta and the alleged special powers given to Amit Malaviya were thoroughly busted. Their alleged emails and screenshots were found to be fake and the entire story was based on false claims. Details on Meta Vs The Wire saga can be found here.
The Wire is now facing a criminal investigation after BJP’s Amit Malaviya filed a police complaint against them for forgery, cheating, and fraud.
OpIndia had fact-checked The Wire’s claims on Tek Fog and has categorically busted its lies. Our detailed article on how The Wire conjured up a non-existent superpower App out of thin air and took everyone on a ride can be read here.
