The world of the Left media is one with rock solid Omertà. This is why, when The Wire was caught pants down manufacturing and fabricating absolute lies to tarnish the image of India under PM Modi with their META and TekFog stories, the left ecosystem started becoming rather desperate to save the beleaguered outlet and its American founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan.
The global Left Omertà drove the ecosystem to sing praises for Varadarajan for ‘bravely accepting their mistake” when the reality was far from it. The truth is that The Wire deliberately peddled disinformation with the help of fraudulent documents, which were forged by The Wire themselves. What The Wire did was not merely a “mistake” as the cabal would have others believe.
Then, they cried ‘attack on press freedom’ when the police started an investigation as it was a case of forgery, fraud, and criminal conspiracy – all such charges indeed being valid because the entire fiasco involved forging documents, conspiracy to malign a few individuals and entities, and a hint of conspiracy as at least 4-5 individuals were involved in it – let us not forget that Varadarajan has repeatedly claimed that he was investigating this report himself as well, was involved in the entire process and even took byline for some of the reports based on the fabricated documents.
With these laughable defences falling flat on their face with questions mounting against their conduct, the Left cabal seems to have found a new way to wiggle themselves out of this ignominy – target OpIndia and attempt to deflect attention from the sins of their own. The mantle to defend the humiliated portal has been taken up by propaganda outlet NewsLaundry, which often publishes hit jobs against OpIndia, full of lies and misinterpretations – a hallmark of Left-wing journalism.
In fact, with the plummeting traffic of NewsLaundry, one would imagine that publishing a hit job against OpIndia is the only way they can get some user traffic and OpIndia would never want that. So acting on that wisdom, here are some ‘questions’ NewsLaundary sent us regarding an article OpIndia had published – and where we accepted to have erred – which shows how they are trying to paint OpIndia as a ‘bigger sinner’ than The Wire, thus helping their fellow propaganda outlet look a little better.
NewsLaundry’s questions are in bold and our answer follows the question:
Verifying facts and taking the other side’s quote is the basic premise of fair journalism. Do you think OpIndia missed out on the basics?
Genius. This is something OpIndia’s editor-in-chief, that’s this author, herself admitted to having missed. A public admission of this miss is being used by the propaganda outlet as some sort of ‘gotcha’ moment where they have ‘exposed’ OpIndia. And yes, the entire Left ecosystem shouldn’t talk about this basic premise of fair journalism where they publish hitjobs after hitjobs against Hindu leaders and outfits without giving them any chance to present their side. A whole bunch of people have been painted fascists, casteists, and whatnot in a one-sided narrative by these folks, and now they want to show as if this is some ‘basic premise’ they have been following.
In fact, one needs to remember how they have painted the Delhi anti-Hindu riots as an “anti-Muslim pogrom” despite overwhelming evidence. These are the portals that wanted to give a free pass to Tahir Hussain by claiming that he had called the PCR and was a victim of the violence, not the perpetrator. This is the portal that whitewashed the Hauz Qazi violence – they, in fact, blamed OpIndia for bringing up the subject of a minor boy missing after the communal violence, simply because he was found later – almost insinuating that unless the child was dead, OpIndia was wrong in bringing up the fact that he was missing. These portals, especially NewsLaundry, have no right at all to claim any higher moral ground – when they peddle falsehoods against Hindus and never apologise.
In your first version of the story, the website mentioned Vinod Dua also. Considering that Vinod Dua is no more, don’t you think you should have checked with his family for his side of the story or the organization with which he was associated at the time of the complaint, in this case, The Wire?
Well, Vinod Dua is survived by a daughter whose wish was that ‘all bhakts should die’, unfortunately (for you), we are not Gandhians and therefore, we do not feel the need to reach out to people who want to see us dead. Secondly, the story stands on its feet due to multiple earlier instances that prove the investigation was botched up.
In fact, here is a report by NewsLaundry itself that is in consonance with the Vinod Due story that was recently reported by OpIndia. I would suggest that the employee reaching out to us reads their own reports before making wild insinuations. Or maybe, NewsLaundry employees themselves don’t read their own portal (frankly, I would not blame them).
Have there been earlier incidents when OpIndia had to accept its mistake on a published story and was compelled to render an apology later? If yes, please specify such instances.
OpIndia was not “compelled to” but we thought it was a fair thing to do, and we’ve done it earlier too without any compulsions like those of The Wire. And yes, I feel no compulsion at all to work on your behalf and give you particular instances as you folks are not important enough for us. I’m investing time in this only for our readers and to deny you the pleasure of conducting a hitjob against us.
Considering you made a grave factually incorrect allegation against Sucheta Dalal, do you think your editorial note should clearly apologize to her and remove the said allegation since you have no proof for it? Should the story be pulled down in your opinion just like The Wire pulled down its factually incorrect allegations against Meta and Amit Malviya?
Now there you gave away your game, and that’s what the start of this article elaborates upon. The editor-in-chief clearly apologized in public to Sucheta Dalal while your Dalal, sorry, your Siddharth Varadarajan is yet to apologize to Amit Malviya. Further, go slow on comparing both stories, we made a mistake where a Twitter user’s claim didn’t exactly match the given documents. Those documents were not falsified by us or the Twitter user – something The Wire did. The Twitter user has not deleted his tweets that included the documents unlike in the case of The Wire where those guys have admitted to having made it up. The Twitter user incidentally has revealed his identity yesterday and he has been involved with publications like The Wire itself earlier, and he is standing by everything he put out. So there are absolutely no similarities at all here between what we inadvertently did (and apologised for) and what The Wire did (and brazened it out till they saw no way out, and then threw one employee under the bus without apologising to Amit Malviya).
If possible, could you please tell us what is your editorial procedure when you are doing a story against someone? Does your organization reach out to people against whom you are doing a story?
By this time, I’m mighty pissed off to answer your supercilious questions as if you folks are a paragon of virtue and reach out to everyone. We, in fact, do reach out regularly. But why the hell should I really be bothered to give you any justifications? Your CEO Abhinandan Sekhri issued a statement about press freedom for police action in a case where IPC sections related to forgery, criminal conspiracy, and such were applied, and all of you celebrated when I had to spend several hours in a police station in West Bengal for merely reporting stories that were published by other big media outlets too. You celebrated when I was driven away from my home state because of threats by political goons and malicious cases that were eventually quashed by the Supreme Court.
The truth is that this hitjob by NewsLaundry or the entire “journalism” by the likes of The Wire is not about “journalism” at all – it is an ideological battle that at least OpIndia is honest about. We don’t hide behind the cloak of neutrality while furthering our ideological motivations. When The Wire fabricates documents to tarnish PM Modi, Amit Malviya and India on the whole, it is about their ideology, not journalism. When NewsLaundry whitewashed the Hauz Qazi violence or painted the anti-Hindu Delhi Riots as an ‘anti-Muslim pogrom’, it was about ideology, not journalism. When NDTV cropped the picture of a mosque to stones and acid bottles were not visible atop, it was about ideology, not journalism. When the entire ecosystem closes its eyes to the blatant fabrication by The Wire and The Hindu in the past, it is about ideology, not journalism. We don’t fabricate documents. We don’t create facts to suit our narrative. We don’t peddle malicious lies. At least we are honest about what we report. At least we own up to our ideology and proudly proclaim that we will speak up for Hindus and against this cabal motivated to watch Hindus being annihilated. You have no locus standi to demand answers from us.
