https://thewire.in/…/large-media-houses-seen-striking-deals…

[<cobrapost.com
has reproduced the excerpts of interactions its undercover journalist
had with India TV, which belongs to Rajat Sharma, an editor known to be
close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India’s largest Hindi newspaper
Dainik Jagran, local Uttar Pradesh channel Hindi Khabar, the
entertainment and news television company SAB Group, the English
newsaper DNA (Daily News and Analysis) which is owned by Zee and Dainik
Bhaskar, Amar Ujala, the news agency UNI, the entertainment channel 9X
Tashan, the UP news channel Samachar Plus, the Uttarakhand channel HNN
24×7, the Hindi newspapers Punjab Kesari and Swatantra Bharat, web
portals ScoopWhoop and Rediff.com, IndiaWatch, Hindi newspaper Aaj and the influential Lucknow-based news channel, Sadhna Prime News.

These platforms represent some of the largest north Indian newspapers
and TV channels. Some of those recorded include big names in the media
industry, including Pradeep Guha, formerly a top executive at the Times
of India group and now at 9X Tashan.

On Monday, Cobrapost.com
uploaded excerpts from the video recordings the portal made of the
undercover reporter’s conversations with media executives at these
firms.>>

(Excerpted from sl. no. I. below.)

I/II.
https://thewire.in/…/large-media-houses-seen-striking-deals…

Large Media Houses Accused of Striking Deals for Paid News to Promote
stealth, shadowy, discriminatory hindutva cult Agenda of just 0.2%
intolerant, cunning, crooked, number one terrorists and corrupt of the
world, violent, militant, ever shooting, lynching, lunatic, mentally
retarded chitpavan brahmin Rowdy Rakshasasa Swayam Sevak (RSS).

In sting operation, CobraPost records major newspapers, TV channels
discussing biased coverage before the 2019 elections in exchange for
huge payments.

Large Media Houses Accused of Striking Deals for Paid News to Promote Hindutva Agenda

The Wire Staff

27/MAR/2018

New Delhi: Several media houses were prepared to enter into a ‘cash for
coverage’ deal with an undercover reporter posing as a representative
of an organisation promoting hindutva cult for electoral purposes,
investigative portal cobrapost.com revealed at a crowded press conference here on Monday.

As part of its investigation, Cobrapost surreptitiously filmed the
interaction its reporter had over several months with top executives at
dozens of leading newspapers and television channels across north
India.. The reporter, Pushp Sharma, assumed the identity of ‘Acharya
Atal’ from the ‘Srimad Bhagvat Gita Prachar Samiti’. At various times he
would refer to his organisation as the ‘sangathan’, and many of the
media executives he filmed assumed he was from, or was close to, the
Nagpur-based RSS.

The pitch ‘Acharya Atal’ made at these media
houses, with some variations, was that in the run up to the 2019
election, his organisation wanted to promote the hindutva cult agenda,
beginning with ‘soft hindutva cult’ content for the first three months
with largely religious messaging, followed by ‘semi-political’ material
which would include ‘character assassination’ of opposition leaders ,
Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav, followed also by content that would
eventually help polarise hindus and Muslims.

In the first part of
‘Operation 136’ – which derives its name from the rank India got in the
World Press Freedom Index of 2017 – cobrapost.com
has reproduced the excerpts of interactions its undercover journalist
had with India TV, which belongs to Rajat Sharma, an editor known to be
close to Murderer of democratic institutions (Modi), country’s largest
Hindi newspaper Dainik Jagran, local Uttar Pradesh channel Hindi Khabar,
the entertainment and news television company SAB Group, the English
newsaper DNA (Daily News and Analysis) which is owned by Zee and Dainik
Bhaskar, Amar Ujala, the news agency UNI, the entertainment channel 9X
Tashan, the UP news channel Samachar Plus, the Uttarakhand channel HNN
24×7, the Hindi newspapers Punjab Kesari and Swatantra Bharat, web
portals ScoopWhoop and Rediff.com, IndiaWatch, Hindi newspaper Aaj and the influential Lucknow-based news channel, Sadhna Prime News.

These platforms represent some of the largest north Indian newspapers
and TV channels. Some of those recorded include big names in the media
industry, including Pradeep Guha, formerly a top executive at the Times
of India group and now at 9X Tashan.

On Monday, Cobrapost.com
uploaded excerpts from the video recordings the portal made of the
undercover reporter’s conversations with media executives at these
firms.

The degree of enthusiasm displayed varies from media house
to media house but the response ‘Acharya Atal’ drew was uniformly
positive. None of the business representatives of the media houses shown
seemed to consider it problematic that a client wanted to use their
platform to influence the upcoming election to polarise voters and
tarnish the reputation of opposition leaders, or that the boundaries
between advertising and news coverage was being erased.

Their
willingness to implement an election-related paid political campaign is a
direct challenge to Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who tweeted
in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica controversy that “any covert or
overt attempt to misuse social media including Facebook to influence
country’s electoral process through undesirable means will neither be
tolerated, nor be permitted.”

Explaining the rationale for its latest sting, Cobrapost.com
said in a press release, “What Operation 136 establishes, for the first
time in the history of Independent India and the world at large:
Yes,country media houses do have the propensity to `influence country’s
electoral process through undesirable means’as they are the
PRESSTITUTES.” Not like Napolean what said:”I can face two battalions
but not two scribes”. thoses days are gone.

Interestingly, some
of the presstitute media houses expressed a willingness to take payment
in cash so that the transaction was kept off the books and GST could be
evaded.

‘We can do any kind of work for you’

In an echo of
the recent Channel 4 expose of Cambridge Analytica – where executives
promised dirty tricks to a reporter posing as a Sri Lankan businessman
seeking the agency’s help in engineering a favourable election result in
his country – at least one of the media executives was filmed making
similar claims. According to cobrapost.com,
Dainik Jagran’s area manager of Bihar-Jharkhand-Odisha offered their
undercover reporter some unconventional services, including sex workers:

“Insisting that he can get anything anti-establishment published in his
paper, Singh reveals more darker sides of his character. It is as
revealing as it is shocking to listen to what next he tells us about his
abilities: “Ek dum aur doosra hum aapko kahan help karenge personally
mere itne saare log hain Bengal mein gents, ladies har form mein hain jo
har tareh ka kaam karte hain har tareh ka … aap jaisa boliyega agar
kisi ke saath so ke data lena ho toh kar denge (Sure and second I will
tell you where I can help you personally. I have a network of people, of
gents and ladies, in every form, who can accomplish any task … If you
ask them to sleep [with a fellow] and steal the data for you, they will
do that as well).”

Undercover journalist was arrested in 2016

Cobrapost is the venture of the celebrated investigative journalist
Aniruddha Bahal, who rose to prominence in the wake of the sting
operation he conducted on behalf of tehelka.com during the prime ministership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee against the then BJP president Bangaru Laxman and others.

Pushp Sharma is an investigative journalist who last came into the
public glare in 2016 when he filed a story in Milli Gazette on how the
Ministry of AYUSH had in an RTI reply admitted that Muslims were not
considered for overseas assignments as yoga trainers in 2015 as a matter
of policy. In the wake of the controversy the story triggered, The
ministry denied sending the RTI reply Sharma had reproduced in his story
and filed an FIR against him for forgery.. Sharma was subsequently
arrested and released on bail. The matter is still pending before the
trial court. Sharma said that an official forensic examination of his
computer had contradicted the government’s claim that his computer had
been used to forge AYUSH ministry documents.

Cobrapost.com
said that for ‘Operation 136′, Sharma adopted “malleable identities’.
He used his association with an Ujjain-based ashram; he claimed to have
been schooled at Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan; to have been to IIT Delhi and IIM
Bangalore, settled in Australia and running his e-gaming company out of
Scotland” in order to make himself appear credible.

Media groups fell for ‘diabolical’ proposition

Cobrapost.com
editor Aniruddha Bahal said that though the “proposition [we made] was
diabolical – If I reward you handsomely, would you peddle Hindutva in
the garb of spiritualism to polarise the electorate and allow the party
in power to harvest electoral dividends in coming elections?” – most of
the media houses fell for it because of the money involved instead of
ideally rejecting the proposition outright. “To our utter shock most of
them not only agreed to do what he asked for but also suggested myriad
ways for undertaking a well-orchestrated, overtly communal media
campaign on behalf of their prospective big-ticket client.”

On how the exposé was planned, Cobrapost.com
said Sharma met owners or personnel of more than two dozen media houses
and offered to pay them anything between Rs. 6 crore and Rs. 50 crore
if they agreed to provide a platform to his media campaign.

The
agenda put out by ‘Acharya Atal’ involved promoting Hindutva through
customised religious programmes to create a congenial atmosphere for
‘soft Hindutva’ during the first three months; mobilising the electorate
on communal lines by promoting speeches of Hindutva hardliners,
including Vinay Katiyar, Uma Bharti and Mohan Bhagwat; and then, with
the elections approaching, turning the campaign to target opposition
leaders such as, Rahul Gandhi, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav by
“caricaturing them using less than dignified language like Pappu, Bua
and Babua, respectively, for them, in order to show them in poor light
before the electorate”.

Despite the proposition being “violative
of various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC)”, which hold
publication of content that is inflammatory or communal a “criminal act
punishable by imprisonment”, the portal said the media executives still
fell for it. It also alleged that by agreeing to take money, these media
houses and their owners also stood in violation of the Representation
of the People Act (RPA) 1951, the Conduct of Election Rules 1961 framed
by the Election Commission of India (ECI), Companies Act 1956, the
Income Tax Act 1961, and Consumer Protection Act 1986 and Cable
Television Network Rules 1994, and the guidelines laid down under Norms
and Journalistic Conduct of the Press Council of India.

A reminder of what happened at Kasganj

Cobrapost.com
also noted that the investigation revealed yet another example of the
Indian media’s penchant for twisting facts or serving pure rumours as
news, as was recently witnessed during the Kasganj communal riot in
Uttar Pradesh recently. “What our investigation shows is symptomatic of
the malaise that has set deep in the labyrinths of the citadel called
Fourth Estate. It also shows that Indian media is on sale, lock, stock
and barrel!”

The portal said it had received responses which
showed media houses were willing to provide a variety of services to
their paying client:

They agreed to promote Hindutva in the garb of spiritualism and religious discourse.
They agreed to publish content with potential to polarize the electorate along communal lines.
They concurred to besmirch or thrash political rivals of the party in
power by posting or publishing defamatory content about them.
Many of them were ready to accept cash, which in other words is black money, for the job to be assigned to them.

‘Media bias in favour of Hindutva on display’

Some of the owners or important functionaries with whom the reporter
interacted admitted that they were either associated with the RSS or
were pro-Hindutva and would thus be happy to work on the campaign. Some
raised legalistic queries – about whether the ‘sangathan’ could
indemnify the channel or newspaper from legal liability – but none of
the executives appear to have misgivings about what such a campaign
would mean for the integrity ‘of the journalism it produced.

Some
of the media houses agreed to plant stories in favour of the party in
power. Many of them agreed to develop and carry advertorials especially
for this purpose. Almost all agreed to run this campaign on their
platforms – print, electronic or digital in its various avatars such as
e-news portal, e-paper or social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Some of them offered to do “a complete media management” to plant
stories favouring the party in power in other publications with help
from journalists other than their own organisations.

Some of the
media houses also agreed to run down Union ministers Manoj Sinha, Jayant
Sinha, Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi when ‘Acharya Atal’ said
the ‘sangathan’ had proof that their ‘lobby’ had acted against the BJP
in the recent elections.

Similarly, some of them also agreed to
run stories against leaders of BJP alliance partners, like Anupriya
Patel, Om Prakash Rajbhar and Upendra Kushwaha.

Varying his
script in some of his meetings, ‘Acharya Atal’ asked a few media houses
if they could also implement the sangathan’s demand that liberal critics
of the government like Prashant Bhushan, Dushyant Dave, Kamini Jaiswal
and Indira Jaising be attacked or that agitating farmers be painted as
Maoists in their stories. Cobrapost said the answer they received was
invariably ‘yes’.

Big budget proved big bait

‘Acharya
Atal’ also gave out two jingles in which Congress president Rahul Gandhi
has been lampooned as “Pappu”. The portal said “although the jingles
look harmless, yet they are plain defamatory, showing the political
leader in question in poor light before the electorate many of whom
would definitely take him as someone to be not fit to lead them.”

The portal said that the media groups agreed to play these because
Sharma had told them his “sangathan” has set aside a budget of Rs. 742
crore for the Karnataka elections alone; that it had spent about Rs.
8,000 crore in the last general elections; and that the budget for the
2019 polls was even more. His offer to each media house ranged between
Rs. 6 crore and Rs. 50 crore, it added.

Bahal told The Wire that
his team is working on producing the video recordings of other media
houses, “including some of the largest in the country” and would release
the second part of its investigation as soon as it was ready. Asked
whether any of the media houses they had targeted had baulked at
‘diabolical proposal’ or turned it down, Bahal said, “We were very keen
to have some examples of principled media houses, of owners and
executives who flatly refuse our proposition. Sadly, we got none. Every
one of the channels and newspapers we approached showed a willingness to
enter into a deal despite fully realising the divisive agenda
involved.”

In an initial reaction to Cobrapost’s story, some of
the media houses have denied doing anything wrong. “I don’t believe in
the credibility of the video,” Sanjay Gupta, head of the Jagran group
told the Indian Express. The company executive caught on tape went “way
beyond his boundaries” and had no authority to “commit such thing”, and
would be proceeded against if the recording were found to be authentic,
he added.

Sudipto Chowdhery, president, sales, of India TV told
the Indian Express the video was “doctored”. He insisted that all the
“proposals discussed or put forward” by the CobraPost reporter “were in
fact entirely turned down by the editorial and legal teams of India TV”.

II.
https://www.cobrapost.com/blog/Operation-136:-Part-1/1009

Operation 136: Part 1
Cobrapost investigation exposes many Indian media houses willing to
peddle Hindutva, which could lead to communal polarization for electoral
gains, and to defame political rivals as part of a malicious media
campaign, all for money

By Cobrapost.com - March 26, 2018

New Delhi: “Any covert or overt attempt to misuse Social Media
including Facebook to influence India’s electoral process through
undesirable means will neither be tolerated, nor be permitted,” thus
spoke Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister of Law and Justice and
Information and Technology, in his tweet on March 21, 2018, at 1:34
India time when a huge breach of Facebook data was reported a day
earlier.

Well, this is exactly what Operation 136 establishes,
for the first time in the history of Independent India and the world at
large: Yes, Indian media houses do have the propensity to “influence
India’s electoral process through undesirable means.”

The
proposition was diabolical: If I reward you handsomely, would you peddle
Hindutva in the garb of spiritualism to polarize the electorate and
allow the party in power to harvest electoral dividends in coming
elections? Ideally, the proposition should have been rejected at the
outset.

But as this undercover investigation by senior journalist
Pushp Sharma reveals, the lure of lucre proved too irresistible for
almost all media houses, be it print, electronic or digital, to say no.
To our utter shock, most of them not only agreed to do what he asked for
but also suggested myriad ways for undertaking a well-orchestrated,
overtly communal media campaign on behalf of their prospective
big-ticket client.

In the course of this investigation, Sharma
met owners or personnel of more than two dozen media houses, many
marquee names, who are in decision-making positions. In return, he
offered to pay them anything between Rs. 6 crore and Rs. 50 crore if
they agreed to provide a platform to his media campaign. He made the
agenda of this campaign explicit to them:

In the initial phase,
the first three months, promote Hindutva through customized religious
programmes to create a congenial atmosphere.
Then, the campaign will
be geared up to mobilize the electorate on communal lines by promoting
speeches of Hindutva hardliners, the likes of Vinay Katiyar, Uma Bharti,
Mohan Bhagwat and others.
As elections approach, the campaign will
target opposition leaders, namely, Rahul Gandhi, Mayawati and Akhilesh
Yadav, caricaturing them using less than dignified language like Pappu,
Bua and Babua, respectively, for them, in order to show them in poor
light before the electorate.
They will have to run this campaign on
all platforms – print, electronic or digital including, e-news portals,
web sites and social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

First,
such a proposition is violative of various sections of the Indian Penal
Code (IPC), which hold publication of content of communal and defamatory
nature a criminal act punishable by imprisonment. Then, all acts the
media personnel agreed to undertake for money violate the Representation
of the People Act (RPA) 1951, the Conduct of Election Rules 1961 framed
by the Election Commission of India (ECI), Companies Act 1956, the
Income Tax Act 1961, and Consumer Protection Act 1986 and Cable
Television Network Rules 1994 which together forbid deceptive or
misleading advertisements, among other laws. These acts also violate the
guidelines, namely, Norms and Journalistic Conduct of the Press Council
of India (http://presscouncil.nic.in/OldWebsite/NORMS-2010.pdf), a quasi-judicial statutory body that was set up in 1978 by an Act of Parliament to act as a watchdog of the press.

Although one may argue that such violations are hypothetical, yet given
Indian media’s penchant for twisting facts or serving pure rumours as
news especially during civil strife to foment communal sentiments – the
Kasganj episode is a clear case in point (https://scroll.in/…/the-daily-fix-sections-of-the-media-pla…; https://thewire.in/2217…/kasganj-communal-riot-hindutva-bjp/; https://www..youtube.com/watch?v=FCpWm16OkfE)
– pleasing political masters of the day and tweaking news in favour of
corporate interests, one can imagine how dangerous it is for Indian
democracy.

What our investigation shows is symptomatic of the
malaise that has set deep in the labyrinths of the citadel called Fourth
Estate. It also shows that Indian media is on sale, lock, stock and
barrel!

Here is a gist of what came out of all interactions that Sharma had during the course of this investigation:

They agreed to promote Hindutva in the garb of spiritualism and religious discourse.
They agreed to publish content with potential to polarize the electorate along communal lines.
They concurred to besmirch or thrash political rivals of the party in
power by posting or publishing defamatory content about them.
Many of them were ready to accept cash, which in other words is black money, for the job to be assigned to them.
Some of the owners or important functionaries, who the reporter
interacted with, admitted that they were either associated with the RSS
or they were pro-Hindutva and would thus be happy to work on the
campaign, forgetting the cardinal principle of journalism: neutrality. A
typical example of conflict of interest.
Some of them agreed to plant stories in favour of the party in power in their publications.
Many of them agreed to develop and carry advertorials especially for this purpose.
Almost all agreed to run this campaign on their platforms – print,
electronic or digital in its various avatars such as e-news portal,
e-paper or social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
Some of them
offered to do a complete media management to plant stories favouring the
party in power in other publications with help from journalists other
than their own organizations.
Some of them even agreed to run down
Union ministers Arun Jaitly, Manoj Sinha, Jayant Sinha, Maneka Gandhi
and her son Varun Gandhi.
Some of them also agreed to run stories
against leaders of BJP alliance partners, like Anupriya Patel, Om
Prakash Rajbhar and Upendra Kushwaha.
Some of them also agreed to
defame the most noted and celebrated among the legal tribe and civil
society like Prashant Bhushan, Dushyant Dave, Kamini Jaiswal and Indira
Jai Singh.
Some of them even agreed to paint agitating farmers as Maoists in their stories.
Many of them agreed to create and promote such content as would aim for
the “character assassination” of leaders like Rahul Gandhi.

Using an alias, Acharya Atal, and donning an ochre scarf, with “Radhe
Radhe” painted in red on it, over a white kurta and dhoti, like a
Pracharak, Sharma adopted malleable identities which he used according
to the situation at hand.. He first used his association with an
Ujjain-based ashram, claiming himself to have been schooled at
Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, to have been to IIT Delhi and IIM Bangalore,
settled in Australia and running his e-gaming company out of Scotland.
Sometimes, he claimed to be head of Madhya Pradesh unit of Om Prakash
Rajbhar’s outfit Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, charged with party
affairs in Karnataka, Maharashtra and the Northeast. In fact, Rajbhar
has appointed Acharya Atal, that is Sharma, in-charge of his party’s
state unit for a consideration of Rs. 50,000 which he accepted on camera
while making very damaging confessions of how various BJP ministers of
the Yogi government coordinate their not-so-honest activities from his
office. We are not reproducing that report here as it would deflect this
story. At times, Sharma used all his assumed identities in a single
meeting. As the investigation evolved to take a pan-India character, he
assumed the identity of a representative of a fictitious religious
organization Shrimad Bhagvad Gita Prachar Samiti, purportedly on a
mission, a gupt vyavastha (secret arrangement), at the behest of the
“Sangathan” to bolster the prospects of the party in power in coming
elections. In fact, elections are due both in 2018 for state assemblies,
when voters in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan
will deliver their mandate, and then in 2019 when Indians will choose
the party to govern the country for the next five years.

Crisscrossing the length and breadth of the country, Sharma met owners
and important functionaries of various media houses and asked if they
would run his media campaign. An important ingredient of this campaign
was planting news items or content duly paid for to denigrate and sully
the opposition, mainly the Congress party, JD, SP and BSP. In the first
three months, the paid content will peddle soft Hindutva; as the
relationship with their organization builds into a certain amount of
trust, the content will take a political overtone, with a clear-cut tilt
in favour of the party in power to bolster its prospects in 2019
general elections. As samples of the media campaign that he wanted to
launch using their platforms, Sharma sometimes played before them some
evocative jingles, caricaturing Rahul Gandhi, to set the tone of his
interviews. Shockingly, these jingles were conceptualized and developed
by the creative teams of some FM radio stations. Two such jingles are
transcribed and reproduced here as samplers:

Jingle One:

A man speaking to a farmer: “Ye aapke pair khet mein gande kyon ho jaate hain (Why do your feet get soiled in the fields).”

Farmer: “Sahib mitti hai na khet mein … isiliye (It is because there is soil all around in the fields, Sahib).

Man: “Chinta mat karo … humari sarakar aayi toh poore khet mein farsh
banwa denge (Don’t worry, if our party is voted to power, we will get
all your fields cemented).”

Another Voice: “Kya aap apna vote
aise Pappu leaders par barbaad karenge (Will you waste your vote on such
Pappu leaders).” The same voice now exhorts: “… apne vote kee qadra
kijiye … sahi party ke liye vote kijiye … Karnataka kee janata ke liye
Shri Bhagvad Gita Samiti dwara janhit mein jaari (Your vote is valuable …
vote for the right party … Issued in public interest by Shri Bhagvad
Geeta Samiti for the people of Karnataka).”

Jingle two:

A man speaking to a villager: Aapki kya kya pareshaniya hain (What your problems are)?

Villager: Beta gaon mein paani bijli toh hai lekin ek bhi shamshan ghat
nahi hai (Son, our village has both power and water but there is no
cremation ground).

Man: Toh main kya karoon (So what can I do for you)?

Villager: Gaon mein shamshan ghat bana dete toh theek rahta (It would be fine if you can make a cremation ground for us).

Man: Hmmm … is baar humko jitana sabke gharon mein ek-ek shamashan ghat
zaroor banwa doonga (Hmmm … then if you vote us to power this time
around, I will sure have one cremation ground for each household).

A voice: “Kya aap apna vote aise Pappu leaders par barbaad karenge (Will you waste your vote on such Pappu leader).”

The same voice now exhorts: “… apne vote kee qadra kijiye … sahi party
ke liye vote kijiye … Karnataka kee janata ke liye Shri Bhagavad Geeta
Samiti dwara janhit mein jaari (Your vote is valuable … vote for the
right party … Issued in public interest by Shri Bhagvad Gita Samiti for
the people of Karnataka).”

Although the jingles look harmless,
yet they are plain defamatory, showing the political leader in question
in poor light before the electorate many of whom would definitely take
him as someone to be not fit to lead them.

Bluffing that his
“Sangathan” has set aside a budget of Rs. 742 crore for Karnataka
elections alone, he tells them that in the last general elections the
Sangathan had spent about Rs. 8,000 crore and the budget for the coming
general elections would be much more than the previous elections, to
help the party return to power in 2019 again. It will certainly bring a
windfall for them. When the journalist sugar-coated his dirty
proposition with offers ranging anything between Rs. 6 crore and Rs. 50
crore, they saw in it that proverbial goose which was waiting to lay
eggs set in 22 carat gold for them.

No surprises then if media
organizations, big or small, old or new, lapped up the proposition and
expressed their willingness to go out of way while working on Sharma’s
nefarious agenda. They not only agreed on camera to run such a toxic
media campaign but some also sent Sharma their proposals for this
campaign along with quotations on his e-mail.

With ascension of
the Saffron Brigade to power especially at the Centre and in 22 states
across the country, most of the media houses, both print and electronic,
in their bid to become their “Master’s Voice” have of late taken up the
cause of “nationalism” in favour of the dominant ideology of the day,
thus turning a Nelson’s eye to real issues that dog the nation. It is
this nationalism that Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) has brought into
question while placing India at 136 on its 2017 World Press Freedom
Index (https://rsf.org/en/ranking#).
To quote the RSF: “With Hindu nationalists trying to purge all
manifestations of ʻanti-national’ thought from the national debate,
self-censorship is growing in mainstream media. Journalists are
increasingly becoming targets of online smear campaigns by the most
radical nationalists, who vilify them and even threaten physical
reprisals. Prosecutions are also used to gag journalists who are overly
critical of the government, with some prosecutors invoking Section 124a
of the penal code, under which “sedition” is punishable by life
imprisonment.” RSF is a Paris-based independent body which works with 18
journalists’ organizations from as many countries and promotes and
defends the freedom of press and information. The three-decade-old body
enjoys a consultant status with the UNO.

Operation 136 derives its name from 2017 World Press Freedom Index.

It is interesting to note here that a few days before this story was
released Pushp Sharma called up some of the media houses to ask them
some more favours which were as whacky as they were outrageous. Of
course, as part of his media campaign, he asked them to publish or air
stories not only against Union ministers Arun Jaitly, Manoj Sinha,
Jayant Sinha, Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi but also against
BJP alliance partners, in order to run them down. He also asked them to
plant such stories as would link agitating farmers across the country
with Maoists. He then asked them to rake muck on legal luminaries who
have always fought for civil liberties and rights, and thus have always
been an eyesore for the establishment, such as the likes of Prashant
Bhushan, Dushyant Dave, Kamini Jaiswal and Indira Jai Singh. Finally, he
demanded to paint the judiciary in such colour as would make their
judgments controversial or questionable in the eyes of the people.

Oh, they rejected all these demands! You may say you guessed it right!

No, you are wrong!

Well in this age of agenda-driven journalism anything and everything is
possible. And it cuts both ways! You show them the colour of money,
they will run down any political party or individual howsoever high he
or she may be in authority.

In the course of the investigation,
names of certain individauls and organizations cropped which was purely
incidental and was essential to bring to the fore the truth and as a
result the story in all its shady aspects.

In the first part of
Operation 136, we reproduce the excerpts of interactions that Sharma had
with India TV, Dainik Jagran, Hindi Khabar, SAB TV, DNA (Daily News and
Analysis), Amar Ujala, UNI, 9X Tashan, Samachar Plus, HNN 24*7, Punjab
Kesari, Swatantra Bharat, ScoopWhoop, Rediff..com, IndiaWatch, Aj and
Sadhna Prime News.

All the above factors despite the real fact that the fraud EVMs will be tampered as usual to win the elections.
If Ballot papers are used thyese 0.1% chitpavanical brahmins will get only 0.1% votes.

[Video]

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Peace Is Doable
stealth, shadowy, discriminatory