On the occasion of Holi on Tuesday (March 7), a man named Mohammad Shabbir in Telangana set his ‘friend’ Anjaiah on fire simply because the latter smeared colors on him. ‘The News Minute,’ which covered the incident, attempted to portray the perpetrator of the crime in a less negative light trying to shift the blame on the Hindu victim.
The online outlet meticulously wrote their article to defend the man’s rage for assaulting his friend. However, the news organization subtly changed the text of the report after enraged Twitter users called attention to the impudence.
When describing Muhammed Shabbir’s gruesome murder, TNM stated that the accused Shabbir felt so disrespected and insulted that he doused Anjaiah in petrol and set him ablaze, trying to project that Anjaiah committed the crime rather than the accused Shabbir.
A Twitter user named Sai called out TNM’s one-sided story, tagging Dhanya Rajendran, Editor-in-Chief of TNM, and asking, “Who writes copy like this? It almost sounds like a justification. Even by #TNMurasoli standards, this is terrible.”
Who writes copy like this? It sounds almost like a justification. Terrible, even by #TNMurasoli standards. https://t.co/NDaJtWHymg pic.twitter.com/qD8hi1GAq4
— Sai (@Saiarav) March 9, 2023
Later, TNM changed the text of the writing without issuing an apology for the original version after receiving backlash on social media for their insensitive writing.
The person who called attention to this offensive writing claimed that Dhanya Rajendran, who deleted the tweet and edited the text, would give a sermon on media ethics.
As I said, this was terrible even by #TNMurasoli standards. So @dhanyarajendran quietly deletes the tweet and @thenewsminute quietly changes the text with no clarification that the text has been changed. And then dhanya will preach about media ethics.https://t.co/g1peMRIC1j https://t.co/jg9aTn6kfa
— Sai (@Saiarav) March 10, 2023
It should be noted that the article by The News Minute was released on March 9, two days after the horrifying incident in which a Hindu man was mercilessly set ablaze by one Mohammed Shabbir for no other reason than that he had applied some color to him. The TNM’s headline stated: “Upset at being smeared with color, a man allegedly sets friend ablaze in Telangana.” The News Minute, as seen in the headline, defended the offender from the beginning by implying that the victim was to blame for smearing Muhammed Shabbir with colors during Holi.
The bias displayed by TNM in its coverage of the incident was quickly brought to light by users online. As a result of the controversy on Twitter, the media outlet quietly changed the article’s text. The two words “Insulted and disrespected” that had been used to defend the horrifying crime committed by Mohammad Shabbir were removed from the revised article.
(With inputs from OpIndia)
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