Recently, news surfaced that Mirror Now anchor Faye D Souza had quit Mirror Now and Vinay Tewari was poised to take over as the new Managing Editor of Mirror Now. While there was no clarity on why Faye had ‘quit’ her job, the ‘liberal’ ecosystem had already started fear-mongering and alleging that she had to ‘quit her job’ because she was a ‘fearless voice’ that ‘stood against’ PM Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.
Lawyer Karuna Nundy termed Faye D Souza as a ‘slayer of fascist ideas’ and ‘a voice of poor’ and said she has been ‘silenced as a prime time anchor’.
Fantastic @fayedsouza, slayer of fascist ideas and a voice for poor, marginalised Indians has been silenced as a prime time anchor. She’ll be great in her new @romedy Oprah style role, but
the blow to integrity and truth in prime time TV news is massive. https://t.co/Mv5RCIZOT7— Karuna Nundy (@karunanundy) 9 September 2019
Prashant Bhushan said that fearless Faye was ‘made to’ resign.
One of our finest TV journalists @fayedsouza has resigned (made to) from MirrorNow. She raised the biggest issues & spoke truth to power. Obviously it annoyed the establishment who then put pressure on the Times management to replace her. Very Unfortunate https://t.co/TNGRY1Vir6
— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) September 9, 2019
Journalist Sakshi said that Faye resigned because she refused to ‘not be’ the voice of the poor.
U never spread hatred, u never shouted to put ur point across, u just followed the basic ethics of journalism @fayedsouza and women like us always look upto u. U have resigned from a job it just means u refused to not be people’s voice. More power to u ❤️ #FayeDsouza https://t.co/HG38jOrw2E
— Sakshi Joshi (@sakshijoshii) September 9, 2019
Congress too jumped in the mix. Shashi Tharoor and Sanjay Nirupam peddled the same agenda insinuating that it was because of the Modi government that Faye D Souza quit.
Its really sad to know that @fayedsouza is forced to resign.
Finally Mirror Now brand of real journalism is past. It will very soon follow its sibling Times Now type of fake journalism.— Sanjay Nirupam (@sanjaynirupam) September 9, 2019
This is an absolute shame: https://t.co/DVFcG6MUYx
IF she was forced out by political pressure, she enters a Hall of Fame occupied by @bdutt, Karan Thapar, @ghoshworld &other illustrious names. But Indian media plunges further into darkness.
Hers was a voice of passionate sanity.— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) September 9, 2019
In fact, there was even a change.org petition that demanded that Faye D Souza be brought back to Mirror Now.
Now, however, Times Network has issued a statement clarifying that Faye will continue to be associated with Times Network and Mirror Now.
The statement says that Faye D Souza played a pivotal role in establishing a strong position for Mirror Now, Faye is now moving away from managing daily operations of the brand and will now be responsible for creating and presenting flagship shows on Mirror Now in addition to steering new shows, IPs and ground events for the Network.
Faye D Souza too issued a statement after 2 days of speculation.
My statement. pic.twitter.com/sWgZYnil2F
— Faye DSouza (@fayedsouza) September 10, 2019
It is interesting, however, none of the individuals who tweeted blindly blaming the Modi government for Faye’s exit based on source-based rumours from an unreliable website has retracted their fear-mongering tweets that rue the state of press freedom.
