India Today employee, one Shyam Meera Singh on Monday took to Twitter to claim he was fired from his job over his tweets on PM Modi after the media house terminated his contract over violations of company’s guidelines on social media use.
He shared two of his tweets’ screenshots where he tweeted about not respecting the Prime Minister and calling him shameless.
In his subsequent tweet, he shared the letter his company sent him informing him about terminating his services.
In the termination letter, the media house had said that despite previous warnings including two formal warnings, Singh continued to air his views on social media platform which is against their social media policy. India Today Group’s social media policy prohibits employees associated with the media house from airing personal opinions. The policy specifically advices all employees to use social media only for news that has been published or aired by system and not for personal views.
In October 2020, India Today Group issued a gag order on its employees prohibiting them from airing personal political views on the social media platform. The advisory said that those having any contracts with the India Today Group can use their personal handles only for posting the content or promotion belonging to the Group that has been used in print, digital or on air. It further said that such persons cannot even reply or retweet to any post even if they have been tagged in it. They can respond to the post only with the content of the ITG.
Ever since these guidelines came into effect, many top employees of the media house with various shades of political ideology like Rajdeep Sardesai, Gaurav Sawant, Rahul Kanwal, Panini Anand etc have also become kind of subdued in airing their personal political opinions on social media platform. So Singh could not quite have been an exception to the company’s policy.
After his tweet got viral, many netizens took a dig at Singh and questioned his competence since other Modi haters continue to thrive in India Today group even now.
https://twitter.com/GappistanRadio/status/1416988193778401282?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwMany also suggested how he could have learnt from his seniors on how to hide his hatred and use his ‘objective’ journalism to speak ‘truth to power’ and malign Modi and his government policies on a bigger platform as they do.
https://twitter.com/KesariDhwaj/status/1416979097805230080?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwSome also were being polite and inform him about company policies and how things work in corporates.
https://twitter.com/sanjeevchadha8/status/1416991050556579840?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwSince the media house has not yet fired very vocal anti-Modi employees such as Rajdeep Sardesai or Panini Anand who harassed his colleagues for not writing anti-Modi articles, Singh’s allegations that it was just his ‘anti-Modi tweet’ that got him fired, do not add up.