Indian journalists say BBC raid part of drive to intimidate media

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Indian journalists say BBC raid part of drive to intimidate media

Published

1 year ago

February 18, 2023

Harry Miller

“Did BBC Take Cash From China For Propaganda?” ran the opening title on the primetime news debate. As the flashy graphics of Republic TV, India’s hardline and overwhelmingly popular news channel, faded and its presenter Arnab Goswami appeared on the screen, he addressed millions of viewers across the country directly. “Ladies and gentlemen, our worst suspicions have been proved absolutely correct,” he said. “The BBC is funded by China.”

Two weeks later, on Tuesday, more than 50 officers from the income tax department descended on the Delhi and Mumbai offices of the BBC. Over the course of three days, officials went through documents, searched emails and cloned phones and laptops, according to BBC employees who were inside the building. At least 10 BBC employees, including five senior editors, were kept there for three nights until the “tax survey” was finally completed on Friday.

The government insisted it was simply carrying out routine checks. “There is absolutely no correlation between what the BBC has put out and what the income tax authorities in India have done,” said Kanchan Gupta, an adviser at the ministry of information and broadcasting.

A screengrab from the Arnab Goswami hosted a debate on Republic TV with the title: Did BBC take cash from China for propaganda?

“This is not a raid or a seizure, it is a scrutiny process. From what I understand, at least 10 notices were sent to the BBC to come clean on certain issues before the documentary. The BBC did not respond to those notices, and that prompted the action.” A statement from the Central Board of Direct Taxes on Friday said the survey had detected “several irregularities and discrepancies”. The BBC has said it is cooperating with the investigation.

Yet the timing of the raids raised eyebrows, and was cited by many observers as an escalation of threats to press freedom and authoritarianism in India under the prime minister, Narendra Modi.

In January, the BBC had broadcast a documentary about Modi in the UK that the Indian government had evidently loathed. The two-part series, called India: the Modi Question, examined rising tensions between Modi’s Hindu nationalist government and the minority Muslim population.

Most controversially, it revisited allegations that as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi had been complicit in the deaths of hundreds of Muslims during religious riots that broke out in 2002. Although the documentary cited previously unreported UK diplomatic cables, the allegations were not new, and had followed Modi for years. In 2012, he was cleared of all charges relating to the riots by India’s supreme court.

The documentary was not released in India but the government went full throttle in condemning it, calling it “colonial propaganda”, “hostile garbage” and evidence of western powers trying to undermine India’s rise to a global superpower. Emergency laws were swiftly invoked to ban any clips or footage of the documentary being shared online.

A hate campaign portraying the BBC as corrupt circulated among rightwing social media users. In particular, the allegation that the broadcaster was being funded by India’s foe China began to take hold, based on a 2022 report in the Spectator magazine that the BBC had accepted advertising revenue from the Chinese company Huawei. Not long after, several of India’s biggest news channels began alleging China was paying the BBC to create anti-India propaganda and it became the topic of multiple television debates, often featuring members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).

“It was a pattern we’ve seen so many times before,” said Raqib Hameed Naik, an Indian journalist who runs Hindutva Watch, a website monitoring hate speech and disinformation on Hindu nationalist social media, from the safety of the US. “These fake allegations are first pushed by rightwing IT cells on Twitter, then they make it onto primetime television debates and eventually they end up with raids by government agencies.”

The BBC documentary India: the Modi Question is shown on an outdoor screen in Kochi, southern india.

“The aim is always the same,” he added. “To silence critics of the government. They’re trying to create this single echo chamber, where only their message resonates and all the critical media is silenced.”

India has a chequered history of freedom of expression and press freedoms, mostly notably during the “Emergency” years in the 1970s when the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, suspended the constitution and jailed and expelled journalists.

Since Modi came to power in 2014, some journalists and other media workers have alleged that a systematic silencing of critical reporting has taken place and that journalists have been targeted as “anti-national” threats to the state. In this year’s World Press Freedom Index, India dropped down to 150 out of 180 countries, its lowest ranking on record.

Gupta denied there was a government crackdown on media. “This is not on the government’s agenda,” he said. “I really do not see the media cowing in fear, sitting quietly in a corner. But media houses are not above scrutiny, the tax laws apply equally to them.”

A large number of newspapers, magazines, digital media and television news channels still exist in India, creating what can appear to be a vibrant media landscape. However, many in the sector describe an environment where mainstream news publications and channels, largely owned by figures who have corporate interests tied into the government, refuse to publish stories that criticise Modi, the BJP or those close to the ruling establishment.

“You have a landscape in India where the legacy media news organisations and channels are so compromised they have just become cheerleaders of the government,” said Abhinandan Sekhri, the CEO of Newslaundry, a digital news organisation.

Critics accuse the government of escalating its crackdown by introducing draconian legislation regulating digital media – including laws giving the government the power to decide what is fake news – and more news organisations have found themselves the subject of government investigations. While numerous Indian publications have been targeted, the BBC raids this week were a first for an international news organisation, though foreign correspondents based in India have faced increasing difficulties over visas and access to sensitive areas of the country.

As the raids took place, figures from the BJP doubled down on the BBC. Its spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia called the BBC the “most corrupt organisation in the world” while the vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar, a BJP member, said that “sinister designs” who wanted to undermine the country should be “boldly neutralised”.

The BBC raid came as little surprise to Sekhri. Newslaundry – part of a small but defiant pool of digital media organisations which have refused to toe the government line – faced the same “survey” by income tax officers twice in 2021. “Whenever this government is displeased with the kind of coverage they’ve got in the news, their response is use the agencies for intimidation,” he said.

The harassment of Newslaundry did not stop after the raids. Failed attempts were made to file criminal charges against Sekhri and he still receives notices from the income tax department every two months or so, demanding documents. “I don’t even know what they are investigating us for,” he said. “It’s a drain on resources but it won’t change what we report.”

A very real fear now also exists among journalists that they will be prosecuted under stringent laws for producing critical work. Digital websites such as The Wire and magazines such as Caravan have faced raids and lawsuits for their reporting, while last year the journalist and fact-checker Mohammad Zubair was arrested and detained, following a sustained campaign against him on social media.

This month, the Keralan journalist Siddique Kappan was released from prison after more than two years, having been detained under terrorism laws as he was on his way to report on a high-profile gang-rape case. He has still not faced trial for the charges he says were politically motivated; among them, the accusation of stirring up religious hatred through his reports and laundering 5,000 rupees (the equivalent of £50).

“I was targeted because I have written pieces that have been critical of the ruling BJP and the government policies,” said Kappan. “The situation for independent journalists is dangerous in India and is deteriorating quickly. What happened to me was meant as a warning to others.”

Nowhere has the Modi government’s media crackdown been more visible and more effective than in Kashmir. Since 2019, when the government unilaterally stripped the troubled, Muslim-majority state of the autonomy it had enjoyed for decades – and subsequently imposed an internet blackout for 18 months – the media landscape has effectively been suppressed almost to the point of extinction.

Three Kashmiri journalists are still detained under draconian terrorism laws, while others who still attempted to report have been detained, beaten, faced constant harassment and interrogation by police and authorities and placed on an arbitrary no-fly list which bars them from leaving the country. Last year, the state’s press club was shut down.

“We had problems before 2019 but it was never this bad,” said Anuradha Bhasin, the executive editor of the Kashmir Times. “There’s been a systematic crushing of journalists and an overwhelming climate of fear so you won’t find a single critical story in the local papers anymore, the front pages just look like a publicity pamphlet for the government. It’s censorship by default now.”

Those in the region say the tactics increasingly being used against journalists elsewhere in India – heavy regulation, harassment by authorities, prosecution under terrorism and sedition laws – are straight out of the playbook that has effectively shut any independent media in Kashmir.

“Kashmir was an experimental laboratory where the Indian government managed to successfully silence the media,” said Bhasin. “That is now being extended to the rest of India in ways that are very brazen and very worrying.”

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PART 2: Is social media the great equalizer or the great menace? – OrilliaMatters

Published

40 mins ago

April 18, 2024

Harry Miller

Editor’s note: The following is the second instalment in a three-part series. To read Part 1, click here.

Depending on who you talk to, social media is either a great equalizer or a great menace.

Some folks believe it’s a great equalizer because it can give a platform to every voice.

Others think it’s a great menace for the same reason.

Essentially devoid of rules, restrictions or any code of conduct, social media can be a battleground — divisive, antagonistic and intolerant.

Linda Myles is the administrator of a Facebook group called Engaged Residents of Oro-Medonte (EROM), a private group of about 550 members that discusses the comings and goings in Oro-Medonte Township.

She said her experience being a victim of harassment, bullying, and misleading and false posts has made her more cautious about how she administers the EROM group.

“I don’t want anyone to be subjected to that in our group,” Myles told BarrieToday. “We have a zero-tolerance policy on abuse, personal attacks or false or misleading information about anyone.”

She said the group has removed and blocked 11 profiles in two years.

“Most of those were because the person engaged in ongoing personal attacks and/or disrespectful language,” she said.

Myles said some were removed when administrators discovered they were not using their real names.

Fake profiles and false identities are an ongoing challenge on social media. Creating one requires little effort. Googling ‘create a fake profile on Facebook’ generated about 158 million results in less than a second.

“I suggest there exist those who are emboldened by the faceless, anonymous and remote nature of social media that behave far differently online than they do in their daily face-to-face interactions,” said George Cabral, Springwater Township’s deputy mayor.

“One way to deal, as an individual, with this type of distortion is to tune it out and avoid participation as much as possible.”

In “real life,” Cabral said, people talk behind others’ backs all the time, but, for the most part, the person who is being talked about remains unaware because people are too polite to mention whatever the slight might be to their face.

On social media, though, not only do people comment, but they go out of their way to ensure the person who the comment is about knows the comment exists.

“Folks feel emboldened to write/say whatever they might normally only say in private or behind one’s back,” Cabral said, “but there it is, completely out in the open for anyone’s eyes to see or ears to hear, including the individual to whom the comment was directed.”

Don Lewis is the administrator of a Facebook group called Oro-Medonte Community Matters. The group features new posts almost daily, many of them pointedly critical of members of Oro-Medonte council. The group has almost 1,000 members.

A number of Oro-Medonte councillors called the site out for distributing misinformation, posting personal attacks on council members and generally stirring the pot.

They claim Lewis is not a real person — that it’s a fake profile being used to conceal the identity of a disgruntled resident.

“I’ve been called Don Lewis all my life. I live in Oro-Medonte,” Lewis said during an exchange on Facebook with BarrieToday.

“I hear all the accusations made against me, but I just don’t care.”

According to Lewis, the Oro-Medonte Community Matters page allows anonymous contributions because there are ratepayers who are afraid to speak publicly due to having been bullied and having lost business due to their companies having been targeted by people whose opinions differed from theirs.

“This is a way to allow freedom of expression without exposing people who are at risk,” he said.

Lewis also claims some of his group’s members have had anonymous, defamatory letters sent to their employers.

When asked to provide specific instances or names of people who have been bullied or lost business due to their comments, Lewis didn’t provide any.

He said the issue is not about who is doing the posting, but rather what is being posted.

“Simply posting facts is not bullying,” he said.

But the root issue, according to some township councillors, is the veracity of those facts. They point out municipal politics is filled with moving parts; some decisions are made in public and some are made in closed session. Unless you’re privy to all of those conversations, any speculation is just that.

“The opportunity to disseminate distortion, perpetuate false narratives and create controversy, to my mind, anyway, weaponizes social media far too easily, taking it far from the good, valuable communications tool it was meant to be,” said Cabral.

“That is the difficulty. And while I do believe it’s a small percentage of users, the numbers don’t matter when their frequency and reach can be so vast digitally. With one post followed by a click of a button, a comment — good or bad — can be instantaneously posted to a myriad of social media accounts.”

‘Russ Logan’ is the administrator of the Springwater Ontario Discussion Group, which has about 1,000 members. He is quick to point out Logan is not his real last name. He said he’s a Springwater resident who uses a ‘nom de plume’ because of his job.

He said set up the group page to get people engaged and hopefully get some feedback local politicians would consider when making decisions for the community.

“I try not to censor too much unless it is completely rude and unhelpful,” he said during a Facebook chat. “To be mad is OK. To be insulting or threatening is unacceptable and will not be approved.”

Back in Oro-Medonte, Myles said Facebook needs to take an active role in controlling the online environment. She said she’s reported harassment and bullying to Facebook, but with no results.

“In my experience, Facebook does nothing,” she said. “There are far too many harassing, slanderous and defamatory posts allowed on Facebook.”

BarrieToday reached out to Facebook to find out how the social media giant defines harassment, bullying and intimidation, and what steps it takes when a complaint is made. Despite repeated requests, Facebook didn’t respond.

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Legal Fight Over Trump Media's Ownership Adds to Its Woes – The New York Times

Published

4 hours ago

April 18, 2024

Harry Miller

Twenty years ago, Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky met Donald J. Trump as contestants on his reality TV show, “The Apprentice” — a connection that led them to help launch the former president’s social media platform, Truth Social, with his blessing.

Now, they might as well be starring in an episode of “Family Feud.”

For weeks, Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky have been fighting with Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, over their roughly 8 percent stake in the company. In February, they sued the company, claiming that Trump Media — which made its trading debut last month at an $8 billion valuation — was trying to deprive them of the full value of their shares. Now they also claim the company is trying to prevent them from selling those shares.

In a separate lawsuit that followed, Trump Media claimed that Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky should forfeit their shares because their poor decision-making had contributed to a yearslong delay in its merger with Digital World Acquisition Corporation. Trump Media agreed to merge with Digital World, a cash-rich shell company, in 2021 as a way to go public, but the deal closed only in March.

The pair’s stake is worth more than $220 million based on the current $26 share price of Trump Media, compared with $2 billion for Mr. Trump. Overall, the stock has fallen about 62 percent from where it began trading on March 26.

The litigation provides a portrait of some of the chaos that has bedeviled Trump Media since its inception. The lawsuits are also a distraction for the fledgling company, which is struggling to show that it is a viable business rather than a money-losing entity whose value is derived solely from Mr. Trump’s presence on its flagship platform. On Tuesday, the company announced plans to launch a streaming video service to draw in more users.

Mr. Moss, now an Atlanta financial planner and radio host, and Mr. Litinsky, a conservative media personality, met Mr. Trump during the second season of “The Apprentice,” which ran for 15 episodes in 2004. Mr. Trump “fired” the two men in Weeks 11 and 12. Mr. Litinsky would later take a job as president of Mr. Trump’s television production company.

Just weeks after Mr. Trump left the White House in early 2021, Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky pitched him on creating a social media company. They came up with the idea after Twitter, now X, and other social media platforms barred Mr. Trump in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The two men convinced him that if he started his own company, he wouldn’t have to worry about being censored and his supporters would follow him to the new platform. Mr. Trump was intrigued enough to lend his name to the effort in exchange for a majority stake in the company. He didn’t invest any of his own money.

The parties drew up an agreement that authorized United Atlantic Ventures, a company set up by Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky, to put the plan in motion. In return, they were promised an equity stake in Trump Media.

Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky, who were on Trump Media’s board, were instrumental in negotiating the October 2021 merger agreement with Digital World, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that had raised $300 million in an initial public offering. SPACs raise money in an I.P.O. in order to buy an existing company like Trump Media, allowing the operating business to go public.

In February 2022, Truth Social made its debut, quickly becoming the former president’s main online megaphone.

Things soon began to go south, not long after Mr. Trump appointed Devin Nunes, the former Republican congressman from California, as Trump Media’s chief executive. By that summer, Mr. Moss had resigned from the company’s board; Mr. Litinsky had done so earlier.

In their lawsuit, filed in Delaware Chancery Court, the two men claimed that their relationship with Trump Media had soured after Mr. Litinsky refused Mr. Trump’s request to give some shares to his wife, Melania, long before the company began to trade.

Trump Media has claimed in its lawsuit, filed in March in Florida state court, that Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky “failed spectacularly at every turn.” The suit blamed the men for the poor rollout of Truth Social, which was marred by technical glitches that Trump Media said had generated “hostile” press coverage. Trump Media also said some of the actions of Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky had contributed to an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission that delayed the merger.

Christopher Clark, a lawyer for United Atlantic, said Trump Media’s lawsuit against his clients was “meritless.” He said that if Trump Media had any claims against his clients, it should bring them before the Delaware court rather than in a separate lawsuit in Florida.

This month, the judge in the Delaware proceeding, Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock III, questioned the rationale for filing a suit in Florida, saying he was “dumbfounded.”

Samuel Salario, a lawyer for Trump Media, said that the company’s “complaint speaks for itself,” and that Trump Media would prevail in court.

In their lawsuit, Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky claimed their right to 8 percent of Trump Media’s shares and the ability to sell them immediately. They alleged that Trump Media had unfairly barred their company, United Atlantic, from selling any shares for six months, just as the merger with Digital World was being completed. The timing of the action was punitive and “retaliatory,” Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky alleged.

Trump Media has argued that the lockup is consistent with how other large shareholders are being treated and that, in any event, the two men forfeited their rights to those shares. The six-month lockup imposed on United Atlantic is similar to a share-selling restriction that also applies to Mr. Trump and investors who backed Digital World before the SPAC went public in 2021.

Legal experts said it was not unusual for founders of a company that went public to become embroiled in a battle over who should get the most shares.

“It’s all about dividing the pie but not about the fate of the pie itself,” said Usha Rodrigues, a professor of corporate law at the University of Georgia School of Law. “Donald Trump is still going to be in control. It’s just about sorting out the pieces.”

Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky aren’t the only ones fighting in court over their equity stake.

Patrick Orlando, the former chief executive of Digital World, is also suing to get more shares of Trump Media, claiming the SPAC’s board wrongly cast him aside a year before the merger was completed.

Mr. Orlando was pushed out in the middle of the S.E.C. investigation, in which regulators said early merger negotiations between Digital World and Trump Media had violated federal securities laws. The S.E.C. did not charge him with any wrongdoing, and Digital World eventually reached an $18 million settlement with regulators.

Mr. Orlando and his lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.

In claiming that Mr. Moss and Mr. Litinsky’s actions contributed to the regulatory investigation, the Trump Media lawsuit said the two men were apprehensive of how Mr. Orlando was conducting the merger talks but continued to negotiate with him anyway.

The suit noted that after one meeting with Mr. Orlando in April 2021, Mr. Litinsky wrote in his notes: “I get scared, is he wearing a wire?”

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