India: Media - Hindutva’s messengers

Frontline, Print edition : April 27, 2018

A sting operation conducted by the website Cobrapost pushes a section of the Indian media into a credibility crisis. By PURNIMA S. TRIPATHI

THE Indian media’s worst kept secret for the past many years, that some sections of them have been bought over, has been confirmed in a sting operation conducted by Cobrapost, the investigative website founded by Aniruddha Bahal of Tehelka fame. The sting operation, which targeted many mainstream print and electronic media companies, including websites, mainly in northern India, has established how paid news, masquerading as news, is a reality; how media houses have become willing accomplices of right-wing propaganda for money; and how they have no problem in peddling defamatory content on the political rivals of Hindutva forces and even push stories running down the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) alliance partners in order to keep them in their place. [. . . ]
http://www.frontline.in/the-nation/hindutvas-messengers/article10106618.ece