The Delhi Police has raided the homes of at least eight journalists associated with NewsClick. The case is related to the acceptance of crores of rupees in funding from China to write and speak against India and spread Chinese propaganda. Since the matter is related to journalists, particularly the leftist media gang, it has been linked to “freedom of the press” online.
Renowned senior journalists like Rajdeep Sardesai even started questioning the police saying that police did not have any warrant or FIR for the raids conducted at the homes of journalists/writers and the confiscation of their mobiles and laptops. Linking everyday news like police raids with democracy, Rajdeep asked, “Since when did journalists become enemies of the state?”
A journalist of Rajdeep’s stature needs to merely make one or two phone calls to find out whether or not the police had warrants or FIRs to search the houses of journalists associated with NewsClick and confiscate their electronic gadgets etc. He didn’t do that. In order to create a buzz on social media, he gave incomplete information.
The only thing that can be said about the question “Since when did journalists become enemies of the state?”, one can answer it with the following
1.) How is propaganda done by taking money?
2.) How can propaganda be done by paying money?
3.) How can China spread its message, its politics, its diplomacy by paying salaries to the people of India in the name of a content company?
4.) If Indian people work in a Chinese company and take salary from there, will they start writing and speaking against their own country?
Whatever questions Rajdeep and journalists like him are raising, I have the answer for them.
I have worked for two different Chinese companies for about four years (from 2016 to last month of 2019). Both the companies were related to content. The work was related to news. All the employees who wrote and spoke at both places were from India. There was not a single Chinese person in the editorial team. The reason behind giving such details is because the next line is shocking. Of course, all of us in the editorial team were Indians, but the editorial policies came from Beijing. We all had to work according to an Excel sheet.
What was there in that Excel sheet?
Be it any topic related to content, news, media – instructions were written in detail. Be it porn, nudity or obscenity – all instructions came from Beijing only. Be it economy, foreign policy, corporate world – the editorial policy was decided by the team from Beijing.
Let us understand with a small example. After the initial hiring, our then-editor decided that topics like banking/corporate/insurance etc. would fall within the economy category. The Indian media largely follows this.
The Chinese team could not understand this, nor could it explain its arguments to us. After this, they called the entire team (Hindi-English) to Beijing at a huge expense, gave everyone a month’s training and explained that there would be a corporate parent category, which would look after the economy/banking/insurance etc.
After this entire episode, the Chinese management understood that if they wanted to run a content-related office in India, it would be difficult to manage it from Beijing. After this, two to four Chinese people started living permanently in our Gurgaon office. They would arrive on visa.
There came a point in time when Chinese faces were more visible in our office than Indian faces. Among these, one to two were always those who had done Hindi courses either from some university in China or from some institute in India. They did not prepare Hindi content because they did not have the required qualification but they were always in the office. Can’t say for certain but can speculate that maybe they were there to listen to our conversation!
The Chinese who lived in the office had a fast typing speed. They always kept chatting with the team in Beijing. From there, the instructions given in Chinese were translated into English and Hindi in Gurgaon and added to the Excel sheet. Even if it was broken English or Hindi, they would do this practice. The Indian team did not have the right to edit it.
What not to do – an Excel sheet for this too
The Excel sheet I talked about above was used to instruct how something had to be done, but that was not all. It is also important for the leftist journalists/writers, who compare “freedom of press” in communist countries like China with India and whine about it in India, to know that there was an Excel sheet which listed the subjects that were not to be written and spoken about. Not only this, as a news aggregator, it was also our job to hide the news coming from any channel/website related to these topics.
What were those topics which the Chinese management did not want to show the public?:
- Any anti-China news
- News related to Arunachal Pradesh
- Any news about Dalai Lama
- News related to Tibet
- Any news from Taiwan
- Hong Kong news
- News and photos of Tiananmen Square and the rebellion there
- No sexy photo/video of Chinese actresses
After all, at whom were the Chinese companies targeting a particular type of content as part of their propaganda? They were targeting the people of India. By taking news from the Indian media houses, these companies spread their work against India through their apps. All those working for these companies were Indians, including me. Don’t know about the others, but for me, salary was the only reason behind this.
Now let us go back to the news about NewsClick. Let us go back to that mindset which believes that – “Since when did journalists become enemies of the state?” The editorial policy that I discussed above, based on which I earned my salary for 4 years, were/are the editors of NewsClick working on similar lines or are they truly the harbingers of “freedom of the press”?
I have selected just four news topics and posted their screenshots above. The number of news published on NewsClick on Tibet, Dalai Lama, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), Arunachal Pradesh etc are all clear from just four screenshots. Zero news on Dalai Lama, only one news on Arunachal Pradesh, only four news on Tibet (including Kashmir, Sikkim, America included as part of editorial policy) and only five news on Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) (including Hurriyat, photos of China, Indian Army, Kashmir etc).
What do these four screenshots show? They show that the editorial policies which were guided by Beijing from 2016 to 2020 (until the Chinese app was blocked) have continued in 2023 as well. This is clear from the news published on NewsClick.
Chinese companies enslave their employees; instead of thinking and understanding, they not only expect you to take direction from Beijing but also force you to believe them. They silence you with the argument that “they know better than you”. In whichever country these companies operate, they ignore the laws of that country and violate the rights of its citizens.
Rajdeep or journalists/writers like Rajdeep who cry about “freedom of press” despite taking their salaries, should ask the question as to how PoK which is Pak-occupied Kashmir becomes “Pak-administered Kashmir”. What’s more, the same media gang awards the so-called gold medal of journalism to BBC, whose editorial policy states “Pak-administered Kashmir”.
After all, what kind of mentality is it wherein Indian people working in Indian offices start accepting the terminology coined by the British or the Chinese as per their editorial policy? The answer to this which Rajdeep or the media gang may not know or pretend not to know, is – salary; the answer is – writing for a price.
PS: I am a former employee of a Chinese company. Just like I once was at Aaj Tak, Navbharat Times, Dainik Bhaskar, Dainik Jagran. Neither have I ever disclosed business data related to any Indian company, nor will I disclose the same about any Chinese company. Therefore, the entire article has been written within the editorial policy. Those policies which can cause harm to the country, are harmful.