Indo-Asian News Agency (IANS) committed a blunder on 12th of September when one of its news articles which covered news regarding the Union Cabinet approving a new scheme. The scheme which is pro-farmer allows private players to procure crops at remunerative prices was announced after a Union Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, IANS while referring to the Prime Minister included a vulgar expletive in his name, “Prime Minister Narendra Bakchod Modi” was how the news agency put out the article. This was by no means a mistake or a typo but someone had deliberately put the expletive in the midst of the Indian PMs name. It is surprising how a wire agency like IANS which has been in the news business for a considerable amount of time and is known to be unbiased as it supplies plain, simple reporting could have let this blunder get out. IANS took swift action removing two of its employees based on initial findings and also issued an advisory stating that the story was being withdrawn.
The agency has suspended the reporter who filed the story and has also given a show cause notice to the editors who were involved in the lineup of the story published. IANS has at least three to four editorial checkpoints where every story no matter how small or big passes through. It is not clear how a blunder of this magnitude could have gone unnoticed by such an efficient team unless there are biased people at multiple levels of the news agency.
Shockingly the suspension of its reporters and show cause notices against editors has created another debate in the media. The leftist cabal which dominates the media houses in India have started calling IANSs’ decision to sack its employees as an attack on freedom of expression. Not only they do not have a problem with the unparliamentary language used for PM Modi but they are trying to stir a debate as to why should everyone be allowed to use expletives in news and media. They have also tried to present the sacking of IANS employees as to how the BJP and the central government interferes in the working of the media houses. These ‘intellectuals’ from the left should be made aware of the fact that IANS is not a government controlled or owned media house, it is a private organisation which has decided to sack its employees for inefficiency and usage of expletives in reporting.
IANS also has every right to sack its employees who commit acts of sabotage which blemish the name of the independent news agency. The use of expletives in reporting and that too while stating the name of the PM of India, Narendra Modi, is a blunder which will cause a loss of credibility to IANS. While the IANS chief has already issued an apology and has ensured that strict action will be taken against the culprits, the reaction of the leftist cabal shows how desperate the media houses are to attack the establishment. The left dominated media houses have left the profession of journalism and reporting a long time back, pushing their propaganda and voicing their narrative is the only thing they can do. It would therefore be unwise to think that these media houses can ever do honest reporting, a shame for media which once reported news but is now trying to set the tone which they deem fit.
