By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter
A few days ago, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta quit as the editor of Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) without giving any reason. Hours after his resignation, it was noticed that EPW had removed the much-controversial article on how Gautam Adani escaped taxes and earned hundreds of crores–unaccounted–with the help of Modi government in the centre. Later on, Thakurta revealed to The Wire that he was asked to not to leave the newsroom until the Adani article, which was penned by Thakurta himself, was not deleted from the website.
This incident shocked many subscribers of the EPW because they always believed it to be one of the journals where politics does not get in the way; where the board of Trustees does not intervene in the editorial decisions. Several subscribers have openly announced to end their EPW subscription after this incident. But what happened a week later was even weirder and shocking.
Several news organisations first published, and then deleted, a story that mentioned how BJP national president Amit Shah saw his assets grow 300% in just five years. Actually, Amit Shah filled the affidavit in his Rajya Sabha candidature declaring his assets. First of all the news became visible in print version of Times of India followed by publishing the same on TOI website. Major outlets which followed the same news were Economic Times, Dainik Bhaskar, Outlook and Zee News.
But soon after the publication of the story media outlets started to take it down from the Websites, without providing explanations. When people started searching for the stories, they were surprised to see that the same story was missing from at least a dozen of outlets. It was missing from all the digital publishing platforms of Bennett & Colman, Outlook group and Zee Media.
The story, based on the affidavits, showed that Amit Shah had increased his movable assets to 19.01 crore in 2017 from the 1.91 crore as in 2012. His immovable assets grew to 15.30 crore from 6.63 crore as in 2012.
The story was also published in print by Zee Media-owned DNA on July 29 and was carried out on the DNA’s website as well. But later on, it was pulled down. When contacted for the comments on this editorial behaviour, employees refused to answer. Some employees told TwoCircles.net that there was pressure to take down the article, but an internal source from Zee Media revealed that the instruction to take down the article was given in writing.
TwoCircles.net has managed to get the copy of an email from the Zee Media group where Social Media team has instructed two persons asking if the online version has covered the story or not? Later part of the email shows that alleged Social Media team has asked that if the story has come online, it should be taken down.
The email is dated July 29 and is timed for 1:34 PM. It also includes the screenshot of the story published in the print version of DNA. To protect the personal information of sender and recipients, we have censored their email IDs. What makes the process more confusing that sender of the email is registered on Gmail’s server, but the recipients have institutional and dedicated IDs.
When we contacted Bennet Colman’s Times of India, where the story first appeared, no one bothered to reply to the queries correctly. Navbharat Times online team had put an explanation on the Facebook page that they published the story via TOI, and when TOI deleted the story from their website, they had to do the same. One employee of Navbharat Times talked with TwoCircles.net on the condition of anonymity. He said, “We were just told to remove the story. I think it came straight from the top, as we were just not discussed. It was said like an orderly manner.”
There are rumours that TOI also received the same kind of email to take down the story, a charge which no employee could admit or reject. However, one employee told us, “It does not feel practical why someone would give a written order to take down a published story. This is a verbal practice as it leaves no paper trail behind.”
The Times employee is partly true in saying that this is one verbal practice, but as one senior journalist from Delhi told us, “This happens in cases where something is fishy, or something which some authority did not like. When something ethically goes wrong, the newspapers (should) pull down the article or story and issue a public apology.”
However, the instances of pulling down the article are not new with TOI. In the recent past TOI and ET, both took down the story in which India was ranking low in World Press Freedom index.
The Times group, however, did the something more strange in the recent past when it opposed the Union Government’s draft bill against the paid news practices. The Union government drafted a bill in 2013 after consideration of Press Council of India in 2010, and Election Commission of India in 2013, where the bill allows the cancellation of any publication for up to 45 days if it is found guilty of carrying paid news. Bennett and Coleman group just dropped an old email dated back to 2013, in June this year, saying, “is erroneously trying to regulate content like the so-called ‘paid news’ which is not in its ambit and was never intended to be,” as the same 2013 bill is being presented in 2017 with some amendments.
If seen in the recent context, Times group is fighting the law against the paid news, and at the same times it goes on to withdraw the news stories, that too based on information from the public domain, allegedly under the government pressure.
The stand taken by Outlook, which is famous for publishing courageous investigative stories, was even more surprising. Last year, the Outlook had published the story of RSS trafficking girls from North-Eastern states by investigative reporter Neha Dixit. The story had caused unethical targeting of the journalist and the magazine as well.
When TwoCircles.net tried to contact Outlook team, the team acted ‘surprised’ at the article being removed, but gave no explanation.
It is important to point out that Amit Shah declaring his assets is not something unethical. He is declaring on a public form which will be made online soon by the Chief Electoral Office of Gujarat state. But what makes the issue bizarre that outlets are being submissive to the right wing propaganda, which may be easy to note the slow death of journalism in India, and also the fact which is how BJP national president Amit Shah grew his funds by 300 percent? However, it is clear that instead of questioning Shah’s income source, mainstream media have meekly submitted to the orders of their ‘masters’.