It is unfortunate to see that even in the times of a national crisis, some media houses simply cannot desist from sensationalism as they leave not stone unturned out to spread panic by resorting to rumour mongering. ThePrint earlier ran an article which claimed that the lockdown will likely be extended which instantly sparked panic among the citizens. The Central government was quick to respond to such allegations and slam the publication for such baseless news. True to its characteristics, ThePrint later quietly deleted the article and scrubbed off the tweets related to the article.
Nowadays, it has become a fashion among the liberal fraternity to cause panic over the Wuhan virus as they attempt to further their anti-Modi agenda. Due to Arvind Kejriwal’s incompetence and inept administration, the states of UP and Bihar have witnessed a huge influx of migrants returning from Delhi. ThePrint saw this as an opportunity to create panic and looked to encash on the migrant exodus.
ThePrint ran an article which has now been deleted, where it stated that the lockdown is likely to be extended by a week in the face of the migrant exodus which sent alarm bell ringings in the Modi government.
Prasar Bharati reached out to Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba and tweeted the quoted article.
FAKE NEWS ALERT 🚨
PBNS got in touch with the Cabinet Secretary on this news article.
The Cabinet Secretary expressed surprise & said that there is no such plan of extending the lockdown. https://t.co/CrLlp6f7X5
— Prasar Bharati News Services (@PBNS_India) March 30, 2020
Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba slammed the report as he said, “I’m surprised to see such reports, there is no such plan of extending the lockdown: Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on reports of extending.”
I’m surprised to see such reports, there is no such plan of extending the lockdown: Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on reports of extending #CoronavirusLockdown (file pic) pic.twitter.com/xYuoZkgM5e
— ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2020
No sooner did Prasar Bharati busted ThePrint’s rumour mongering, the latter quickly deleted the article from its website and social media handles. It would have been better if ThePrint had shown such diligence while writing such article.
The liberal fraternity is full of rumour mongering as recently The Quint turned an engineer into a doctor and made him the convener of an imaginary “COVID-19 Hospital task force” as the “doctor” claimed that India is already under stage-3 of the virus where local-to-local transmission takes place and the virus spreads its deadly wings at a deadly pace. Unsurprisingly, The Quint was slammed for peddling their nefarious agenda.
At a time when the country is going through a national crisis, there are growing calls for media houses and journalists to be more responsible and not indulge in fear mongering as this could plunge the country into chaos.
