Our website is barely two years old and we are still a small team, albeit hopeful of growth in the new year as we are now part of the Swarajya media group. We hope to continue receiving support from you as will keep our focus on mainstream media bias.
On an average, we published just around 10-12 articles per week in these two years, while other media houses publish thousands of articles, and yet we could create an impact thanks to your support.
These are the top 10 articles that you helped go viral and made them the most read this year. You can click on the preview images or the link below the images to read the respective articles:
1. 10 rumours related to demonetisation that you might have believed as true
Demonetisation was the buzzword of 2016, undoubtedly. It surely helped a lot of media organisations push up their TRPs as people needed to know what happens to their cash. But they also needed to know what not to believe, and for that OpIndia.com was there. Our top post was about top rumours related to demonetisation:
2. Why Indian media is against Arnab but India isn’t
The other newsmaker of 2016 was Arnab Goswami, who first went ballistic over ‘bharat tere tukde honge’ gang and then left his channel to announce his own venture. While the establishment media may hate Arnab, most people loved him. And that reflected in the traffic to our website too, with the following post – explaining why the common man was with Arnab – being the second most read article of the year:
3. An open letter to Rajdeep “IAmAntiNational” Sardesai
While Arnab was singing the nationalist tune, his detractors declared themselves “Anti-National”. The one doing it proudly was Rajdeep Sardesai. His rants were responded by filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, and that was our third most popular article of the year:
4. Exclusive: The exact reason why I&B Ministry recommended a token ban on NDTV India
This year also saw Pakistan backed terrorists launching attacks on our army camps. Media yet again faltered in their reporting of live terror situation. NDTV India was awarded a one day token ban, but the government of India could not show spine to stand by their own decision. Our exclusive article explaining why this one day ban was awarded to NDTV India got into the top 10 list:
5. THIS is why so many money launderers are getting caught. And it will only get worse
Demonetisation again. Apart from long queues outside banks and ATMs, what made news was daily raids and recoveries of suspected ill-gotten money by police and tax authorities. Surely not ‘achchhe din’ for money hoarders and launderers. Our article explaining why these guys were getting caught went viral:
6. Shocking: Rajdeep Sardesai loses cool, abuses Twitter users via Direct Message
Rajdeep Sardesai again. The angry young man (angry due to Madison Square scuffle he got into, and young due to standards set by our politicians) of Indian journalism got angry again and sent abusive Direct Messages to Twitter users. He later claimed his account was hacked, but didn’t appear to file any police complaint about this alleged cyber crime:
7. Meet the journalism student who almost lost his career for shouting anti-Barkha Dutt slogans
If Rajdeep is there twice, how can Barkha be behind? The angry young woman (refer to her countless threats about suing people on the social media) had once got angry with one journalism student who shouted slogans against her in public. We carried interview of that student, which was among our top read articles:
8. Barkha Dutt, you are not a terror sympathiser
And Barkha Dutt again. 2016 also saw Barkha openly attacking Arnab and lobbying for support in her tirade against Arnab, whom she accused of trying to gag media. She further claimed that Arnab had painted all other journalists as anti-national and “terror sympathiser”. Stand-up comedian Nitin Gupta explained to Barkha, in his style, why she was not a terror sympathiser. And it went viral:
9. How the ‘intellectual mafia’ works every time there is terrorist attack
Terror attacks and media coverage was another much talked about issue this year. An article contributed by one of our readers, Prashant Jha, who observed how the Indian media and “intelligentsia” changes tune with passage of time after any terror attack was widely read. It was a perfect observation and analysis for channels like NDTV and their ecosystem, how they go from caring for the nation to attacking those who are singing nationalist tunes:
10. This guy has been replying to Rajdeep Sardesai’s tweets in style, and they’re hilarious
We get most of our traffic from the social media, and thus we keep a close eye on these platforms too. And we spotted a Twitter user “The Lying Lama” who was just killing it with his replies to some celebrity journalists. A collection of some of his best replies to Rajdeep Sardesai was one of the most read and shared articles this year:
And with that, wishing you all a happy and prosperous and media-lies-free (sorry for the joke) 2017!
