Currency crunch, chaos, and fake news

Sudhir Chaudhary of Zee TV presenting his story on the GPS chip. 

 

The grossly shoddy implementation of demonetization scheme has caused enormous pain and chaos to the ordinary Indians. So far more than 40 deaths have been attributed to the crisis. But media has added to the melee by propagating sponsored or fake stories about demonetisation’s promises and performance.

There is no dearth of online website that claim to be news portals but do nothing more than propagating falsehood to promote a particular political party’s agenda. But the brazen way in which  established mainstream media has surrendered media ethics to propagate fake stories would shame even the fringe online portals.

Here is how this propaganda machinery worked following the November 8 announcement of PM Modi.

 1. ‘GPS chip’ in News - Zee News and Aaj Tak

The shock of the demonetization announcement had barely sunk in when social media began  to buzz with the ‘security features’ of new five hundred and one thousand notes. Zee news — often accused of being a mouthpiece of the government — was quick to cash in government’s ‘Digital India’ initiatives. Sudhir Chaudhary, who ironically, has won a prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award for excellence in Journalism, in his Prime Time program Daily News and Analysis, detailed out how the ‘state of the art Nano technology’ will be a pathbreaking feature and the Nano GPS chip (NGC) used for all the new notes will help locate the notes — even 120 metres underground via satellite tracker! The RBI was quick to dismiss such claims. But the news had spread to millions already and RBI’s rebuttal had not.

Although ABP news did not call out Zee news but it rubbished the claim of NGC in it’s ‘Viral Sach’ Program.  Was it too much to expect from Mr. Chaudhary or Zee news  to apologize for spreading this trash?

Aaj Tak’s Shweta Singh was also seen discussing the ‘Nano Technology’ with her colleagues in the now viral video released on Nov 18.

 

2.  Gujarat Businessman ‘surrendering’ Rs 6000 Crore cash - ABN Telugu

Gujarat businessman Laljibhai Patel surrendering Rs 6,000 Cr  in cash to ‘support’ PM Narendra Modi’s fight against Black money was circulated widely on WhatsApp and Facebook. These messages were shared and lauded. On 14 November, ABN Telugu broadcasted this further by ‘authenticating’ the news already in circulation. The youtube link had 65,000 hits. Later, many more new portals like NewsPoint TV and OneIndia News and Bollywood colours relayed this on their youtube videos.

The ‘sacrifice’ of this Gujarati businessman was labeled as Patriotism until an Indian Express report along with his bite, busted this myth.

 

3. Not just a fake story, ANI fakes its own employee as a Customer at Tea Stall.

 

 

Of all the fake news posted by mainstream media, this would probably take the cake! While the other reports were guilty of misinformation, ANI went one step further. To show the success of Modi’s digital initiative, it actually asked one of it’s employees  Shashank Tyagi to appear like a genuine customer and laud a Tea stall at R K Puram for ‘accepting’ cashless payment. Make no mistake, ANI is no fringe news portal. It is often considered as close to the government and posts breaking news ahead of other news agencies. ANI’s endorsement of Modi’s initiatives was quickly shared by many. But like many other lies, this was also exposed faster than they get created. Hugely embarrassed by Twitter users exposing it, ANI apologized and tweeted ‘regrets the error’.

 

4.  Cash seized from SUV

This wasn’t just a case of mainstream TV Channels picking up news from some of the trash on Social Media. Around 10 November, a video started circulating on Facebook and twitter showing Police seizing huge amount of cash from a SUV. This video demonstrated the success of Mr. Modi’s ‘surgical strike’ on black money, it was claimed.

But only a simple search on Google proved that this was an old news from 2015 - prior to state elections of Maharashtra.

These are just few example of numerous propaganda unleashed via combination of social media and mainstream media - One complementing another seamlessly to make a fake story appear genuine news. 

Unless things improve dramatically on the ground at ATMs and Banks, we can expect more such ‘news’ to come our way.