Smita Prakash, the Editor at Asian News International (ANI) is known for her wit and humour and is popular on social media, especially Twitter, for the same. When Juhie Singh, a Samajwadi party leader who was chairperson of Child Rights Commission shared a story by Newslaundry about ANI reporter touching feet of UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath with #Boycott_ANI, Mrs Prakash retorted, “Tell that to your boss!”
Tell that to your boss! 😀
— Smita Prakash (@smitaprakash) February 16, 2020
Newslaundry published a story, which was originally published with fact-checker Alt News, under the title ‘What’s going on! Video surfaces of ANI reporter touching Yogi Adityanath’s feet.’ The story argued that “The fourth pillar of democracy has mostly succumbed to the diktats of the establishment.”
The argument of the whole article was that ‘mainstream media’ has succumbed under the pressure of the Modi government and has no courage to speak ‘truth of power’. As per the story, the mainstream media has turned to a PR agency of BJP governments in the state as well as the centre. “Politics makes strange bedfellows” is a saying that is vindicated to a not insignificant extent by the close nexus between mainstream media and politicians,” it argued.
Given the fact, ANI is the largest media organization that provides syndicated multimedia news feed to multiple news-bureaus in India and beyond, no politician or political party chose to boycott the agency. The politicians like Akhilesh Yadav depend on ANI to reach the wider public and to mainstream media organizations, as no other agency sends its reporters to cover the small party function, gatherings, or rallies.
This is not the first time Smita Prakash has destroyed the left-liberal media establishment and their loonies. Previously she trolled Alt News’s chief editor and founder Pratik Sinha when he insinuated that she is bootlickers.
You shouldn’t be so cruel on yourself Prateik. Tch tch!
— Smita Prakash (@smitaprakash) November 8, 2018
People like Sinha of left-liberal media establishment take high moral ground in front of the camera, but In back rooms, they behave as tax evaders, money launderers, sexual predators, sycophants and what not. This establishment is responsible for informing the public, if their dealings are full of scams and biases, how it could be expected that they would tell ‘right’ story to populous of the country. The interesting thing is they cry foul of ‘political witch hunt’ when some legal action is taken against them.
A few months ago, she slammed Audrey Truschke, a self-acclaimed historian and scholar, who is known for her biased worldview and anti-Hindu propaganda, for spreading fake news.
In her incendiary tweet, Truschke said, “Some news out of Aligarh — A few students had their wrists cut off. Many have had fingers chopped. Dozens badly injured. As a professor and a human being, I am horrified.”
She got immediately called out for spreading such lies by Smita Prakash, who said, “Horrified that an educated person would put out a tweet like this without verifying this information.”
Smita Prakash has shown the Samajwadi Party leaders their place in the wider socio-political media establishment. These people want to see only the media which supports their agenda and ideology, like NDTV and hate news agencies like ANI because the editor, Smita Prakash, has a centre-right opinion and ideology.
