India is facing multiple challenges at this juncture, we are facing an unprecedented pandemic COVID, which has devastated our social life and economy. It also resulted in job losses for thousands of Indians and lead to misery for millions.
However, there is no doubt that it is the Fake Media channels and Websites, which are fueling the situation by sharing cooked up stories, fake news, sensitive pictures and botched up and highly biased ‘Fake News busting‘.
We don’t know if you are aware that Eleven Indian digital news organizations have joined hands to “represent, amplify and evolve best practices to build a robust digital news ecology”. This is an umbrella group – DIGIPUB News India Foundation, that comprises of Article 14, Alt News, Boomlive, HW News, Cobrapost, Newsclick, News Minute, Newslaundry, Scroll.in, The Quint and The Wire.
And since the day these media houses came into existence, they have started pushing their anti-Indian, anti-Hindu agenda with full frontal forces. This has been quite visible in recent two sensational instances of Anti-Farmer Law toolkit and the recent Congress Toolkit.
During Anti Farmer protests, Greta Thunberg released a toolkit, which clearly mentioned the names of these media houses, and asked their supporters to use their articles, re-tweet their contents against the Indian Government, to create an unrest situation and diminish India’s image at global level.
In recent case, Congress’s toolkit has been exposed, which is comprises of several anti-Indian, Anti-Government and Anti-PM Modi content to diminish the image of India and create an unrest in India to destabilize the political situation in India. Even in that toolkit, there is a mention of all these anti-national media houses.
Who fund these anti-National and anti-Hindus media?
Let’s talk about the Alt News, which is known for sharing fake news in the garb of fake news busting. It gets individual donations ranging anywhere from Rs 9 to Rs 1,000. Alt News has been set up as a non-profit organization and it is the Zindabad Trust, that has donated an unspecified sum to this website with just three employees including Sinha and Zubair.
The Zindabad Trust is managed by a hardcore anti-national Arundhati Roy. Roy had set up this trust from her 1997 Booker Prize award money. Roy has herself confirmed that she had donated to Alt News as “it is doing a wonderful job of trying to set the record straight and counter the propaganda masqueraded as news.”
However, the shocking is that many Indian MNC’s like Infosys also funds Alt News. Here we are sharing the funding documents of Alt News.
Alt news received 84 lakhs from IPSMF in 2020 and 51 lakhs in 2019. It received Rs. 10 lakhs from Infosys foundation. Arundhati Roy gave 6 lakhs in 2019 and 2.5 lakhs in 2020. It received Rs. 2 Crores as a total donation for the year 2020, and it is still asking for donations.
If we talk about the other media house The Wire, which is known for its hardline stance against India, PM Modi, and Hindus. The Independent and Public Spirited Media Foundation (IPSMF) funds The Wire. It claims to support a ‘public-spirited and socially impactful narrative in Indian journalism’.
Following are the trustees of IPSMF.
- Dr. Ramachandra Guha
- Mr. Aamir Khan, the actor
- Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives Private Limited
- Mr. Cyrus Guzder (logistics, courier business tycoon)
- Ms. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (Chairwoman of Biocon)
- Lal Family Foundation
- Manipal Education and Medical Group India Pvt Ltd
- Piramal Enterprises Limited (large pharmaceutical company)
- Pirojsha Godrej Foundation
- Quality Investment Pvt. Ltd.
- Ms. Rohini Nilekani (wife of Infosys founder Nandan Nilekani who is also a member of the Indian National Congress)
- Rohinton and Anu Aga Family Discretionary
- Sri Nataraja Trust (Chennai-based NGO started by Lakshmi Narayanan, ex-CEO of Cognizant Technologies).
- Tejaskiran Pharmachem Ind. P. Ltd.
Unimed Technologies Ltd. (Gujarat-based pharma company) - Viditi Investment Pvt. Ltd.
Recently, The Wire received considerably huge funding of Rs. 1.16 crores from a Trust, owned by the renowned Tata Group. Tata Group had funded other digital media publications like The Print, led by Shekhar Gupta and Shradha Sharma’s YourStory, who are known for their malice against PM Modi and Hindus.
Tata, as a brand, is known for its integrity and Indian-ness. However, the fact that the owners chose to entrust an allegedly anti-government media portal is beyond our understanding.
Tata’s funding was allegedly a reward for an alleged cover-up of a sexual harassment offense of an ex-Taj Hotel employee by her ex-boss. Former Tata Group Executive, Anjali Pundit had reportedly written to Siddharth Varadarajan, Editor-in-chief (The Wire) to bring out her account through his portal. However, that never happened.
At a time when information is at the fingertips, it’s time media houses acted responsibly towards nation-building, and live by the thin line between reporting facts and giving away to prejudices.
It is obvious that any MNC or organization puts their money in any media house for some sort of benefit. It is important to understand the big game here, how these media houses run fake news, fake stories to put pressure on the Government by accusing them of fake stories, to create a situation where Government can provide them some sort of favors in return.
These practices are actually creating an environment of animosity and binging the bad name for our nation as well. Our Corporates must behave responsibly and invest on media houses that put the right perspective for viewers and portray the positive image of our nation. Unfortunately, this is not happening due to the vested interests of these renowned Indian Corporates houses.
