The story of the great ABP purge has made it to the international press. The Economist did a very vague article describing it as PM Modi’s tactics of keeping his image intact. Their article lacks substance and proper research. The Economist writes, “It featured a woman in the poor, remote state of Chhattisgarh who declared that her income had doubled since he came to power. An ABP News investigative programme subsequently tracked down the woman, who confessed on camera that she had been coached to make the claim”. However, the woman later on rubbished the claims of the ABP show and said the channel twisted her words and used them selectively. According to My Nation report, the woman said, “I had told the Prime Minister about doubling my income by processing the pulp of sitafal. They are talking about agriculture, but I had said that pulp processing led to a doubling of my income. I had told the PM that earlier, while sitafal cultivation got us around Rs 50, after training we get double the amount by processing pulp. I was talking about pulp only and not rice”.
ABP didn’t even visit farm of Chandramani Kaushi and filed a malicious report on prime time. In their enthusiasm to push anti-Modi agenda, they didn’t even do basic fact checks. @milindkhandekar must run an apology on his channel for misleading his viewers. #UnfortunateJournalism pic.twitter.com/yCx5eRmP3q
— Amit Malviya (मोदी का परिवार) (@amitmalviya) July 9, 2018
People were quick to expose the fake news peddled by the senior journalist who used to run his overrated flop show on the channel. His show was notorious for spreading misinformation against the incumbent government and especially against PM Modi. His show was less about news and factual information and more about pushing baseless anti-BJP and anti-Modi narrative. The credibility of the channel suffered a huge setback because of his show. He preferred narrative over news and fiction over facts to tarnish the image of a democratically elected leader just like The Economist.
International publications like ‘The Economist’ have no understanding of India. As far as the great ABP purge is concerned, the reason behind their sudden exit is still unclear. The leftists and the liberals claim that the trio got fired because of their anti-Modi rant, while others claim that they have willingly left the channel to launch a massive anti-BJP media outlet with the funding from the opposition parties ahead of 2019 General Elections.
According to the live mint report, Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal had once famously said that over 150 media publications were owned by individuals affiliated with the Congress party. He further said that the Congress party would activate this machinery to “carve a legend out of Rahul within a decade”. Now, this is called an image building.
The international media first should do proper research about India and its politics before passing its opinion on it. They should keep in mind the following quote by Harlan Ellison: “You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”