Hindi news media has long been an undisguised ‘kar sevak’ of #Hindutva in the gau belt. With #UPElections2022 round the corner, the line between government and party, editorial and advertorial, and journalism and propaganda has all but vanished, as owners eye a windfall. (1/3)
Exhibit A: ‘Dainik Jagran’ (2/3)
Exhibit B: ‘Amar Ujala’ (3/3)
As governments buy the silence and acquiescence of media with thousands of crores of advertising, the only resistance to this shameless abuse of taxpayers’ money is coming from unattached journalists and commentators using social media. #UPElection2022
All is maya: The @YouTube channel of 4PM that showed the thin crowds at an @AmitShah rally in Uttar Pradesh, and captured the bulldozer threat of @myogiadityanath, suddenly goes missing. Padma Bhushan @sundarpichai, please to note. @editor_sanjay
“Don’t publish anything against @myogiadityanath on the front page. Don’t give space to @yadavakhilesh inside. We will take care of all your expenses”: Sanjay Sharma, the editor of the Lucknow daily ‘4PM’, explains the genesis of the death of his @YouTube channel. @Editor__Sanjay
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Has India become a corruption-free country already? Or, are the crooks getting smarter? Just one dot from Madhya Bharat in the @guardian expose of “criminals, fraudsters and corrupt politicians” holding £80 billion worth accounts in the notorious Swiss bank @CreditSuisse.
“We can reveal today how #CreditSuisse repeatedly either opened or maintained bank accounts for a panoramic array of high-risk clients across the world”: How the @guardian showcases its expose of “criminals, fraudsters and corrupt politicians” over 7 pages.
On 9 Jan 2014, four months before he became PM, @narendramodi promised to bring back money “stolen” from India and deposited in foreign banks: “If we bring that back, each poor Indian will get Rs 15-20 lakh just like that.” @PMOIndia#CreditSuisse
He was home minister for 23 months from Aug 2019. It was because he met all the KPIs that he was made @CMofKarnataka
2️⃣ @BSBommai was home minister when school children in #Bidar were charged with sedition, for a line in a play that “insulted” @narendramodi during the anti-CAA protests. Bommai had the temerity to say: “It is a very serious and sensitive case.”
3️⃣ @BSBommai is an “educated” politician, an engineer. In #Bidar, the school children charged with sedition were between 9 and 12 years of age. Najumunissa, 35, a single mother, spent a week in jail because police under Bommai’s watch charged her Class V daughter. @IndianExpress
2️⃣ #BJP’s political quest for the Babri Masjid only began in the late 1980s. In #Karnataka, the ground to reclaim Baba Budangiri, a Sufi shrine in #Chikamagalur district, had been laid a decade before #Ayodhya became common parlance, in 1978.
3️⃣ In 1990, when L.K. Advani’s ‘Rath Yatra’ passed through #Karnataka, seven people died in Bidar in communal riots. But 600 km away, in and around #Bangalore, at least another 33 people died in clashes in 5 locations. It was not an accident.
“When Sunil Gavaskar was introduced to Noor Jehan on India’s 1982 tour of Pakistan, she said: ‘I don’t know him. I only know Imran Khan and Zaheer Abbas.’ When she was introduced to him, he retorted: ‘I don’t know her. I only know #LataMangeshkar’.”: commentator Sushil Doshi.
In 1988, #LataMangeshkar sang with #SPB for the Tamil film ‘Satya’. The composer @ilaiyaraaja has often explained how the lyrics were tailor-made for her. #ValaiOsai
Listen:
Greatness in every language: how newspapers salute and celebrate the life of #LataMangeshkar. Several front pages are in all black, and at least one of daily lowers its masthead.
🪡 The day after the #UnionBudget is the closest India’s media comes to peddling pornography. There’s so much public display of affection—ranging from flirting to petting, from kissing to kissing the ass—that the moral police could easily charge it with indecency. (1/5)
2️⃣ There are the usual diabetes-inducing 10/10 pronouncements of the “captains of industry”, drafted by hacks-turned-PR shills, competing word for word with newspaper headlines, which compete with #PIB releases. Like, “#Nirmala presents ‘Amrit Kaal’ budget”.
3️⃣ Although India has been warned of the “2A variant” by former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramaniam, only @gautam_adani has dropped his pearls of wisdom on @nsitharaman’s offering. Mukesh Ambani has let employees of his execrable TV channels to bare their patriotic fangs.
2️⃣ Beyond the fact-free content of #UttarPradesh ads, the real issue is the vomit-inducing splurge of taxpayers’ money to capture media. In just the 31 days of December, sangh mouthpiece ‘Dainik Jagran’ received 63 ads; ‘Amar Ujala’ 58; ‘Hindustan’ 37. #SochInaamdaarKaamDumdaar
3️⃣ Add advertorials, partnerships, events, slanted news (prepaid and postpaid) and puff pieces intended to massage the ego and secure more, and the obnoxious waste of public money by the @myogiadityanath government to buy up media becomes clear. #SochImaandaarKaamDumdaar