The lapse committed by 'The Wire' - and why it's the worst of times for independent journalism in India

The police raids on the editors of 'The Wire' show that in India today any news organisation that dares to be critical of the government will be hounded for any kind of lapse at all

The Wire's retraction of its reports on social media giant Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, is no more than a blip in the larger context of Indian journalism. However, given the current state of the Indian media, the misreporting by the news portal, which has been one of the few remaining voices to question the sins of omission and commission by the BJP government at the Centre, could have costly consequences for independent journalism in the country.

The essential facts of the Wire-Meta imbroglio are well known. Early last month, The Wire reported that the BJP's IT cell head, Amit Malviya, enjoyed special privileges at Meta, which enabled him to take down any post. The website put out certain redacted emails from two cybersecurity experts who had apparently verified the source material for the stories. While Meta said that the reports were false and the so-called evidence fabricated, several experts pointed to inconsistencies in the material corroborating the stories. The ones whom the Wire is said to have consulted also came out and said that they had not vetted the technological evidence for the story.

Finally, on October 23, The Wire took down its reports and subsequently issued an apology, saying that it had been deceived by a "member of our Meta investigation team".

Should The Wire have been far more rigorous with its editorial checks before it went public with a sensitive story? No question. Should it have been doubly, trebly, careful that its reportage was watertight when the subjects involved were a global corporate behemoth and a key functionary of a government not known for its benevolence towards its critics? Of course.

Read | Digipub condemns police searches at 'The Wire'

The Wire admitted as much, apologised for its gross editorial lapse and took down the stories. It has also retracted an earlier story on the so-called 'Tek Fog' app as one of the journalists involved in the Meta investigation had also been part of that report. Predictably, there was much outrage and gleeful chortling amongst right-wingers and supporters of the government who claimed that the incident had destroyed the credibility of the website, which is known for its criticism of the ruling party, that this proved that they dealt in fake news, and so on. And there was evident schadenfreude amongst some journalists too, who suggested that The Wire had confused journalism with activism and hence had been lax in checking the veracity and accuracy of its story.

But the matter did not end there. Acting on a police complaint filed by Amit Malviya, who alleged cheating, forgery and defamation on the part of the website, the Delhi police raided the homes of Wire co-founders Siddharth Varadarajan, MK Venu and Siddharth Bhatia and some others, and seized their phones and laptops — an action that was shockingly excessive and in all probability, not entirely lawful. In effect, the might of the state machinery was being unleashed upon journalists for an editorial lapse, much in the same way as it might have been against those who had committed grievous criminal offences.

Irrespective of whether The Wire was gulled into falling for an elaborate set-up to discredit it and torpedo its credibility (it has filed a complaint against the reporter in question), there's no doubt that the website failed to exercise due diligence before it published the reports. However, it is not as if the alleged cosiness between Facebook and the BJP has not been reported before. In 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that hate speech by the BJP, although in clear violation of FB's content policy, was not taken down by the social media platform. Not long after, a senior executive of Facebook India resigned, following allegations of her having extended undue favours to the ruling party.

Read | Delhi Police conduct searches at houses of The Wire founders

Be that as it may, retractions by news organisations are always damaging to the publication and likely to be used against it. In 2017, CNN had to retract a story that said that Anthony Scaramucci, a close aide of then US President Donald Trump, had ties with a Russian hedge fund. Though Scaramucci was mollified after CNN pulled down the piece and published an apology, Trump and his supporters pounced upon the mistake and went to town, declaring CNN to be a purveyor of fake news. But even Trump, extreme though he was in all manner of ways, did not think of sending the police after the editors of CNN.

The police raids on the editors of The Wire show that in India today any news organisation which dares to be critical of the government will be hounded for any kind of lapse at all. It takes just one misstep — or indeed, even the barest whiff of it — for the state to launch a swift and ruthless retaliation against an entity which it perceives to be hostile towards it. In June this year, Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News (which has busted many a falsehood put out by proxies of the BJP, amongst others), was arrested and kept in custody for 23 days for allegedly hurting religious sentiments because he had tweeted a picture from a Hindi movie in 2018.

"Naturally, the same "standards" do not apply to all publications. Last week, OpIndia, a stridently right-wing news website, published a story which seemed to suggest that a Twitter user had accused financial journalist Sucheta Dalal of having impeded the #MeToo probe against the late journalist Vinod Dua. (OpIndia later admitted that it had made that inference.) When Dalal vigorously disputed the claim on Twitter, saying that she had never even met Dua, all OpIndia did was to add her reaction to the story and apologise to her for not contacting her for her comment. It did not take down the false and defamatory non-story, as it should have done.

One can be sure, though, that this lack of editorial ethic on the part of OpIndia will neither evoke epical shock and horror on social media, nor lead the crime branch to swoop down on its editors.

The point is that in India today, while media that are close to the powers-that-be may get away with all kinds of journalistic impropriety, including gaily disseminating misinformation, for independent voices, speaking truth to power has become a perilous affair. You have to be careful about defamation, but is real journalism possible if you have to tread on eggshells, watch your back, and exercise self-censorship every step of the way? And what journalistic objectivity can a publication claim if it has to balance one story critical of the government with nine others that find ways to praise and justify the government's policies?

The heavy-handed and disproportionate state reaction to The Wire's mistake goes beyond the immediate harassment of the website's editors. It is clearly meant to intimidate other journalists and media organisations who retain their independence and have still not plighted their troth to the ruling party. It's one more flashing red bulb that tells you that this is the worst of times to be a non-partisan journalist in India.

(Shuma Raha is a journalist and author)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.