Indian outlet on defensive after its explosive claims of Meta political censorship By Gerry Shih, Niha Masih, Joseph Menn and Naomi Nix https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/18/india-facebook-meta-the-wire/
The Wire is investigating its own reporting. It had alleged Instagram let the ruling party tamper with posts.
Extracts: (lightly edited for easy reading)
... In India, a massive and important internet market, Meta has for years been accused of turning a blind eye to hate speech made by government supporters against India’s religious minorities, particularly Muslims. Meta has also been accused of being overly deferential toward the government when it comes to content moderation decisions.
Wire reported that ...The California company had given an influential official from India’s ruling party the extraordinary power to censor Instagram posts that he didn’t like, citing a document leaked by a Meta insider. allegedly coroborated by an expert, Kanishk Karan.
Karan told .. The Washington Post that he was informed that Wire staffer Devesh Kumar had showed founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan, an email from Karan that supported Kumar’s reporting. But Karan said that had never sent that email.
Pranesh Prakash, a co-founder of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore says he believed Varadarajan maintained his personal integrity even though his publication had failed its journalistic responsibility. He told Prakash that Wire reporters had consulted Karan as a technical expert and assured him that their reporting was sound, Karan said he had never sent an email to Kumar offering his opinion.
“There is this propensity to see everything as right wing versus left wing, and the need to evaluate everything from that lens,” he said. “One of the pitfalls with the media ecosystem, and the political ecosystem in India, is tribalism.”
Comment: As an observer, one cannot decide if indeed there are people devious enough to plant a self incriminating story only to later damage the reputation of a reporter/channel/outlet. Or whether it was a case of a person back-tracking on a email under pressure.
While most of the stories tend to get the Left-Right polarity.. There is an increasing attempt to discredit the more effective centrist critics as extreme Left. or as anti-development or just plain anti-national..