While mainstream media was abuzz with the news of the bundles of notes found after Income Tax raids on Dhiraj Sahu’s premises, the so-called “independent media” failed to cover this important news. Let’s see who did and what they did.
The Quint published an article in Hindi on 9 December 2023.
Newslaundry shared an 8-9 minute podcast episode on 11 December 2023. The episode only covered headlines for that day. This is what the 1-minute coverage said, “In one of the largest ever cash haul in India, bank notes worth over Rs 350 crores have been unearthed so far at Congress Rajya Sabha MP Dheeraj Sahu’s properties at Odisha and Jharkhand. While the searches were completed on Sunday, the IT department continued to count the cash. It has been able to put a number on the cash recovered with 140 or 176 bags of money having been counted. The counting alone has been a massive campaign spanning 5 days involving 50 bank officials and 40 cash counting machines. The searches into Dheeraj Sahu’s properties began on the 6th of December. The Congress MP’s extended family is allegedly in the alcohol manufacturing business. Most of the cash recovered from Sahu’s properties have been linked to Boudh Distillery Private Limited in Odisha. Meanwhile, the Congress has distanced itself from the matter and has sought an explanation from the MP.”
On 13 December 2023, a YouTube video was published on their channel. In what seemed like a troll video, in passing, the speaker spoke about the money found at Dheeraj Sahu’s house. he said, “Returning to the old issue, what is the matter of money, Sanjay said, as far as I know, Maharaj, The name of the person from whose house the money was found is Dheeraj Sahu, it is a very old business family of Jharkhand and have been doing the business for a long time. People who are MPs of Congress Party, a huge amount of money was found in their house, only now the money has been recovered, its investigation has not started properly yet, no one knows whether this money is real or not.”
Watch!
So Newslaundry has jumped to defend Congress MP Dhiraj Sahu
They are asking so what if 350 crore cash is found?
This is what liberals consider highest form of journalism… pic.twitter.com/hZBefwO34a
— Abhishek (@AbhishBanerj) December 13, 2023
In a video lasting nearly 26 minutes, Atul Chaurasia from Newslaundry, in the ‘Tippani’ section, criticized the central government and mainstream media for singling out Sahu. Chaurasia pointed out that, as of now, only the money has been found, and the investigation into its nature is yet to commence. He emphasized the uncertainty regarding whether the money was legitimate or illicit and argued that despite this ambiguity, mainstream media and BJP supporters have already begun targeting Sahu. Chaurasia questioned the basis of considering the mere recovery of money as evidence of a crime and also criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi for using emojis in his post on the matter.
From this short bit, it seems as if they are justifying the money and connecting it to their liquor business as said in the podcast.
A netizen questioned the hypocrisy of this so-called independent media which did not give the issue as much coverage as other news media.
Dropping the H as my Odiya brethren have pointed out. pic.twitter.com/B3A86o515N
— Nonsensical Nemo (@NonsensicalNemo) December 12, 2023
It is noteworthy that this tweet was posted between 11 AM and 12 noon on 12 December 2023 calling out The News Minute, The Wire, Scroll, etc. At around 3.30 PM that day, The News Minute published an article – nearly a week after the news about the IT raid broke out.
The Commune also tried searching for news articles on the said issue, however, it did not turn up any results from The Wire and Scroll.
Portals that call themselves independent media continue to implore their audience for funds day in and day out. Despite this, they do not do a great job of reporting news that needs to be covered.
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