The suspicious silence of television media on Kejriwal’s murderous lies reveals many things

On Friday, Arvind Kejriwal’s Delhi government was exposed by a Supreme Court-monitored audit committee for inflating the national capital’s peak oxygen demand by four times in April-May, thus depriving twelve high caseload states of medical oxygen which they desperately required for saving lives. One would have thought that India’s “brave, independent and objective” media would have questioned and gone after Arvind Kejriwal and his coterie of oxygen shortage orchestrators. That is what the media should ideally do. Report on a wrong – a murderous one in this case, and then bring in its top guns to make culpable politicians regret ever choosing politics.

Indian media, however, is spun out of a different, low-quality and degradable cloth. Therefore, despite Arvind Kejriwal’s government having been exposed as the one which inflated Delhi’s oxygen demand astronomically, Indian media decided to give a complete pass to the news.

Ideally, primetime news should have been replete with debates, discussions and monologues of how the AAP government of Delhi lied through its teeth during the devastating second wave of Covid-19, misled the highest of courts, and judicially strongarmed the Centre at a time when it was overburdened with the responsibility of delivering oxygen to all states. Arvind Kejriwal, however, made it all about Delhi and himself.

Yet, the media seems least interested to call out Kejriwal and his coterie of oxygen hoarders. And why is that? It is because the Aam Aadmi Party has been allegedly flushing Indian electronic media with cash – vast amounts of cash – during no less than a pandemic when the industry as a whole has taken a financial hit.

As reported by TFI, the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government of Delhi spent Rs 32.52 crore on advertisements in January 2021, Rs 25.33 crore in February 2021, and Rs 92.48 crore in March 2021.

In totality, for the year 2021, Rs 467 crore has been earmarked as a publicity budget by Kejriwal’s Delhi government. Last year, this figure stood at Rs 355 crore. With a total of Rs 822 crore being spent on advertisements and publicity on Delhi in the last two years, Arvind Kejriwal has seemingly bought major Indian media organisations – who now simply cannot gather the courage to question Delhi’s supreme leader.

The Kejriwal government is reportedly ruthless with journalists who dare question its malpractices. Furthermore, back in May, seven Hindustan Times journalists were thrown out of an official WhatsApp group after their paper wrote an article critical of the AAP government’s handling of the oxygen crisis in Delhi amidst the rising COVID-19 pandemic.

Hindustan Times had published a report headlined, “Anatomy of Capital oxygen crisis: 5 things Delhi govt didn’t get right”. The AAP government neither liked the headline, nor the content of the report, which is why seven journalists from the organisation were unceremoniously kicked out of an official WhatsApp group. What’s worse, despite being a group of 150 journalists, only a handful of them spoke out against the treatment meted out to the HT employees.

So, the media is punished by Kejriwal if it speaks out against his government. Needless to say, the Aam Aadmi Party is not allegedly paying hundreds of crores to the media for it to report critically of the Delhi government. What Kejriwal expects is loyalty and subservience – unquestionable and unflinching. Therefore, despite having been caught creating a false oxygen demand in Delhi during the peak crisis, the Indian media has largely ignored AAP’s crimes – thus putting journalism to shame once again.