On January 18, The Hindu’s N Ram spoke to a group of journalists in an online discussion on The Wire’s fabricated story about Meta and Bharatiya Janata Party’s IT Cell head Amit Malviya. Speaking at the Global Journalist Seminar by Reuters Institute for Study of Journalism on the topic ‘How The Wire’s Meta controversy could have been avoided’, Ram not only insinuated that the after-effects of the story would not affect The Wire too much but also implied that as The Wire has apologised, the case against them would not hold in court.
Mithali Mukherjee was the host of the seminar.
However, he did agree that there was no political conspiracy against The Wire, who fell for a story completely fabricated by its own reporter, Devesh Kumar.
‘How much sorry is enough’
When Mithali asked that The Wire apologised, but many have accused them of making investigative journalism difficult for others in the future, Ram replied with a question and asked ‘how much sorry is enough?’. He said the media house has admitted to the mistake and removed the stories. He mentioned that the reporter’s other story about the Tek Fog has also been put under internal investigation by The Wire. In such a case, how more the media house needs to apologise?
Giving the example of the New York Times which was accused of fabricating a story but the journalist never actually apologised for it, he said every organisation has a different style of working. Praising Siddharth Varadarajan, the founding editor of The Wire, he said, “I think Siddharth has been sorry enough. I saw those statements in my personal view [he has apologised for enough]. But some people feel he should have apologised to Amit Malviya. I think yes to him specifically rather than issue a public apology.”
Comparison of tech experts with product reviewers
During the seminar, Ram made a bizarre statement. He said, “It is fashionable to say now that Indian newsrooms lack Tech reporters. I don’t think that is completely true. Do you see the columns they have? They have reviews of technology products [and] consumer products, for example, cars. So I think there are a lot of skills, and I do not think we are short of IT skills and technology skills. Whether they are deployed is the question.”
It was a statement that made no sense. Many freelancers can write perfect reviews of the products without knowing the technical details of the products. Saying that all the media houses with writers to create content on products and technology may also have the know-how for in-depth technical investigation journalism is not true.
The level of sophistication required to debunk the Meta story broken by The Wire was not a beginner’s one. It required a number of technology experts to come together on social media platforms and use the combined information to prove that it was indeed fabricated. A technology writer cannot do that without understanding the fundamentals of what goes in the background of any program.
The ‘anonymous’ source
Ram said that if a journalist or a reporter says that he or she does not want by-line, it is a major red flag that The Wire missed. Reportedly, Devesh had asked to keep his name in the background from some of the stories. He further pointed out that if a source is proven to be fake, he would not think twice before throwing the source under the bus and revealing his or her identity.
Interestingly, he claimed that Devesh did not name the source. However, it was revealed in some reports one of the initial sources who allegedly gave him the PIR report on Instagram was Philip Chua. Siddharth himself revealed his name in a tweet. Siddharth was very well aware of the sources but did not verify the details from tech experts before publishing them.
A source’s anonymity should be protected but not at the cost of a nation’s reputation. Even the CBI court has said in a recent order that journalists are not exempted from revealing the sources of the stories. The investigating agency had submitted a closure report in the court. It said the journalists and channels who had published forged documents about the case refused to disclose their source. The court, in reply, told the investigation agency that there is no statutory protection for journalists’ sources, and further investigation was ordered.
Ram pointed out that before publishing a story, the editor-in-chief or someone designated to know the sources must be made aware of where the information, documents and other material came from. Just saying that sources’ anonymity is important will not cut the deal.
No evidence of political conspiracy
One of the most important aspects of the seminar discussion was that N Ram himself admitted that so far, he did not see any evidence that it was a well-planned political conspiracy against The Wire. He said, “I’ve not seen any evidence, and the people I talk to in The Wire also have not seen any evidence that it was some part of a great kind of political conspiracy. No, we don’t know who fabricated the original story about Amit Malviya. I don’t think it could have been invented completely by Devesh Kumar. He said he talked to a source…who the source was…we don’t know. I don’t think there is any indication it was a part of a grand political conspiracy and that The Wire was set up.”
He added, “I think common sense is not always a safeguard, but I think you can use a large dose of common sense to see whether it makes sense and ask, ‘Does this make sense?'”
Is there no case against The Wire?
N Ram claimed that the case against The Wire would not stand in a court of law. He further claimed this is why no further progress has been made in the case. However, The Wire has already been booked under several relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 420. The Wire’s editor and journalist were actively involved with Devesh Kumar. The published stories have their bylines. As the case progresses, they will have to face the consequences. Saying that just because there is some delay in the matter, it would not be correct to say that the case would not stand a chance in court. Not to forget, a 2019 case against JNU’s former student leader, Shehla Rashid, paced up in 2023 after Delhi LG permitted proceedings against her. There are many cases that see a slow pace in the beginning but reach a conclusive decision in the end.
‘Who is responsible for giving a platform to fake story’ asked BJP’s Devang
OpIndia spoke to BJP’s Devang Dave who was mischievously named by The Wire in now-removed Tek Fog stories. Dave said it was absolutely wrong to say the case would not stand in court. He said, “The judiciary is an independent body and it will take its due course in the investigation. It is not correct to say there is no progress in the case because it would not stand in court.” Speaking about the responsibility of the platform, he said, “Who gave a platform to publish the Tek Fog stories or the Meta stories? Not one, but 25 of Tek Fog stories were published. Was it a public platform like Facebook? No, it was The Wire. They gave the platform to know the details of the story. Not only that, they used the opposition and further fueled the issue.”
Meta vs The Wire saga
On October 6, The Wire published a report that an alleged satire piece was removed by Instagram. This post had a byline of Jahnavi Sen, who is also named in a police complaint filed by Malviya. On October 10, The Wire published another story claiming it was Amit Malviya who got the post removed. This report, too, has only Sen’s byline. When Meta denied allegations, they came up with another story claiming Andy Stone, Head of Communication at Meta, was furious as the information regarding powers given to XCheck-linked accounts got leaked. This third story had Sen and Siddharth Varadarajan’s bylines. For the first three stories, in this Meta controversy where forged documents were published, only Sen and Varadarajan took bylines. Only in the subsequent articles was Devesh Kumar gave a byline as lead author.
This report contained verification of emails via DKIM (voiced by Ayushman Kaul) and the same had Ujjwal Kumar’s mail as well as ‘evidence’. All of which has now turned up fake. Kumar and Kaul had earlier paired up for The Wire’s ‘exposé’ on the Tek Fog app, which claimed to have superhuman powers, again powered by BJP. The ‘app’ never existed and here also it is likely all the screenshots provided by The Wire were fabricated. The Wire has taken down Tek Fog-related stories too. However, The Wire has filed a complaint only against Devesh Kumar till now with respect to Meta’s absurdity. Subsequently, cases were filed against The Wire and The Wire filed a complaint against Devesh Kumar as well. OpIndia’s complete coverage of the Meta vs The Wire saga can be checked here.
How N Ram manufactured the Rafale scam through digitally cropped documents?
One of the petitioners in the ‘Pegasus snooping scandal’ is N. Ram, the Chairman of Kasturi & Sons Limited and publisher of The Hindu. Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the journalist desperately tried to create an anti-Modi wave by manufacturing a ‘defence scam’ in the Rafale deal.
On February 8, 2019, The Hindu had published a note from a defence ministry official who had objected to the Prime Minister’s office inquiring about the progress of the deal. This was despite the fact that the officer was not involved in the negotiations of the deal. The Hindu wanted to project that there was opposition to the Rafale deal in the defence ministry and only the Prime Minister was pushing for it. In doing so, the newspaper had cropped a vital part in the same document, a note by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. The then defence minister had written that the officer was overreacting, and offices of Indian PM and French President were just monitoring the progress of the deal.
Immediately after the Hindu report, ANI had published the full document, which had proved that N Ram had used a cropped version of the document in his article. About 10 days after the incident, The Hindu came up with a clarification, saying that it did not doctor the document. In its column Readers Editor, it has claimed that the document published by it was an earlier version, which didn’t include the Defence Minister’s note. As proof of the same, The Hindu had noted that the document published by ANI had serial numbers on each note, while there were no serial numbers on the document published by Hindu.
To hide the evidence of Parrikar’s note, the Hindu cropped the document in two places, and even digitally erased part of a stamp that should have been visible even after cropping the same. And its claim that it did not doctor the document turned out to be false, because a date stamp before the defence secretary’s note was clearly removed from the document. As such, the petition in the Supreme Court over the alleged snooping scandal looks like another desperate attempt at anti-Modi propaganda.
