'Misleading and Mischievous': India slams Wall Street Journal for reporting fake news
29 Apr 2021 14:48:32
New Delhi, April 29: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Thursday slammed the A Wall Street Journal for paddling the fake news against the Modi-led government. According to the Ministry statement, the media report in which A Wall Street Journal has claimed the Centre had asked Facebook to remove certain hashtags from its platforms, are "misleading and mischievous".
The government in a statement said, " a story by Wall Street Journal attributing removal of a certain hashtag by Facebook to GOI's efforts to curb public dissent is misleading on facts and mischievous in intent. "A Wall Street Journal story attributing removal of the certain hashtag by Facebook to Government of India's efforts to curb public dissent is misleading on facts and mischievous in intent. The government hasn't issued any direction to remove the hashtag. Facebook clarified it was removed by mistake," it said.
Wall Street Journal on the 28 april published a report titled "Facebook Blocks, Then Restores, Content Calling on Indian Prime Minister Modi to Resign" to mislead the readers. In its report, they wrote that Facebook temporarily blocked a hashtag where people had called PM Modi to resign. Later, the hashtag was reinstated. WSJ wrote, “The #ResignModi hashtag was blocked on Facebook for several hours amid a national controversy over India’s response to an escalating Covid-19 crisis and the government’s efforts to curb public dissent.”
According to the governmert, it is not the irst time eariler A Wall Street Journal on 05 march also paddled the fake news against the BJP govt with the headline "India Threatens Jail for Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter Employees" claiming that Facebook removed the #resignModi under the pressure of the government. However, according to the govt and Facebook, the central government did not ask social media giants to do so. And the social media giant also said that it barred the hashtag by mistake.
The news was jointly written by the AWS reporters Jeff Horwitz, Newley Purnell. In the report the Jeff and Purnellwrote, "India’s government has threatened to jail employees of Facebook Inc. its WhatsApp unit and Twitter Inc. as it seeks to quash political protests and gain far-reaching powers over the discourse on foreign-owned tech platforms, people familiar with the warnings say." The report claimed that the ‘warning’ came as a direct response to the tech giants’ reluctance to taking down data published on their platform which fuelled the violence in wake of ‘farmer’ protests.
The government had also sent an official rebuttal of this completely fake and manufactured story to the Wall Street Journal. "It is pertinent to mention that on 5th March 2021 also, Wall Street Journal had published a fake news with heading - 'India Threatens Jail for Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter Employees'. The government had sent an official rebuttal of this completely fake and manufactured story to Wall Street Journal," the statement said.
In the last center said, Media has a very important role to play in acting as a force multiplier to the efforts of our front-line workers and medical professionals. At a sensitive time like this, we would urge the media to partner with crores of ordinary Indians as we collectively fight the pandemic."
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