Thread by @MnshaP

Migrant from Assam in Mumbai falsifying migrant distress in the city on the day when scores had gathered outside #BandraStation

His office is about 20 minutes from where they had gathered but he still couldn't report on the issue, instead fed us conspiracies

Thread 👇🏼

Not just Arnab, on the same night, top anchors across channels chose not to report accurately on why migrants had gathered outside Bandra depot.

Check this thread out:

https://twitter.com/sighyush/status/1250088175583686656

Keywords they used: 'Saazish', 'masjid', 'instigated', 'mob', 'CAA', and ya even 'Shaheen Bagh'.

The goal was to tell their viewers that these were not migrants in distress wanting to go back home, this was an anti-Modi, politically-motivated mob that wanted chaos.

This, in a nutshell, is what a major section of TV news has become today — backed by big money/brands, politically-connected, the 'Lutyens media' uninterested in telling the truth.

@tweets_prateekg gets us what they didn't bother telling us in this report
newslaundry.com/2020/04/16/no-…

He met migrants who were part of the crowd: “I am a daily wage labourer. My home in Malda runs on my income. I don’t have a penny. Life has become hell here. That’s why we want to go back home.”

“In my case, I have no money. About 13-14 of us live in one room. Trains were shown as available on railway booking sites and apps. So people thought there was still a chance they could go back.”

“I checked the Dadar-Guwahati Express, which was shown as available on April 15 with 370 seats,” he said. “I hadn’t booked it yet. When others said they were going to the bus depot to demand for trains, I went too, thinking it would help.”

“People gathered because all of us had hoped we could go back to our villages after the lockdown,” he said.

Ashraf shares a 250 sq ft room with 10 other migrant workers. “The weather has become hot. We don’t even have space to breathe inside the room.”

On the night of April 14, India TV founder Rajat Sharma tweeted that the “gathering of people outside a masjid in Bandra” was a matter of concern. If they had come to catch a train, he said, where was their luggage?

https://twitter.com/RajatSharmaLive/status/1250070320788234240

The workers weren’t carrying bags because they hadn’t assembled to catch a train, they hoped to speak to government officials about their predicament. Over a dozen migrant workers confirmed as much to Newslaundry.

The reason why the workers were near the masjid is because the masjid is next to the bus depot. The police requisitioned a microphone from the masjid in order to address the crowd.

“To address the crowd, the police used the masjid’s sound system. They requested the imam to tell the crowd that coronavirus is a global emergency, that it’s wrong to gather like this in large numbers, that it’s a pandemic.”

As far as ABP Majha is concerned, all the migrant workers whom @tweets_prateekg spoke with and who had gone to the bus depot said they hadn’t read or watched the ABP Majha report. Many of them pointed out that they didn’t even understand Marathi.

Do read this report for all the details around the Bandra gathering.
newslaundry.com/2020/04/16/no-…

TV channels that continue to misled and serve the powerful are backed by Big Money/political clout — we don't need any of that.

What we do need is for news consumers to step in & subscribe so that we can continue to call them out and report what they don't #PayToKeepNewsFree

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