News18 – the TV news channel and website that is part of the Network18 media group – used a fabricated photoshopped image while carrying a story about the protests by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) workers and their families at UP’s capital city after the company’s announcement to close its Lucknow Center.
TCS in a statement had said it was shutting its Lucknow centre as part of the “consolidation process” and has asked its over 1,000-odd employees to either shift to Noida or Indore centre.
Referring to the above, the News18 report filed by a reporter named Qazi Faraz Ahmad on Monday, carried the following image:
No caption was provided for the above picture nor was any source cited for it, but it was used alongside another picture, which was genuine, of a silent march in Lucknow. As one can clearly see that the text on the placard carried by the old man — which asks Chief Minister Yogi to let his son reamin with him in Lucknow — appears edited.
Also, a rainbow flag being carried by a woman in the picture suggests that it could be about LGBT issues, rather than about TCS. An OpIndia.com reader Rajdendra Singh Chhabra investigated this and discovered that this photograph is originally from a gay parade at Chennai held in 2012. Here is the original photograph published in Huffington Post which had given credit to social sharing site Reddit:
Whether it was a case of a reporter being fooled by a photoshopped image, or the reporter himself photoshopping an image is not clear, but what is clear is that News18 did a shoddy job in reporting.