Kerala News

TNM’s Dhanya Rajendran Uses Mohanlal Pic In Paywalled Article With No Mention Of Him, Netizens Slam Her For Baiting, TNM Minions Go In Damage Control Mode

September 3, 2024
The Commune

The News Minute’s Dhanya Rajendran has been targeting Malayalam superstar Mohanlal, who was the head of the Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA).

Following the Hema Committee Report and the wave of sexual harassment allegations in the industry, Mohanlal resigned from his post at AMMA. Mohanlal stated he was “not part of any power group” and had “no knowledge” of such groups in the industry. He acknowledged that AMMA could not address all issues within the vast Malayalam cinema industry. Mohanlal emphasized, “Wrongdoers should be punished if there is evidence against them,” and supported the government’s decision to release the Hema Committee report.

Dhanya shared an article on Radhika Sarathkumar making a startling revelation about a movie she worked in the Malayalam film industry. The cover picture of this article had Mohanlal’s picture on it. If we look into the article, there is no reference to Mohanlal anywhere inside. Radhika did not mention anything about Lal in the Asianet interview nor was there any reference to him anywhere on that page. And yet, she used the picture.

The word AMMA is mentioned 4 times on the whole page, and she had put it behind a paywall! Here are some netizen reactions calling out the hypocrisy of The News Minute, Dhanya, and her minions.

Many netizens pulled out pictures of her with Rima Kallingal who has been accused of hosting rave parties in Kerala.

When netizens questioned her intent in using Mohanlal’s picture, her minions came out in support of her one by one.

Korah Abraham who works at TNM came up with a thread of posts to explain why it was done so. He wrote, “Lot of outrage regarding Mohanlal’s picture being used in this article. It’s because it was published on Aug 27 and was about AMMA and Mohanlal. You will know why @dhanyarajendran made the Radhika reference if you read the article. One section was on men collecting souvenirs. These souvenirs as we were told could be CCTV footage to blackmail. Which is why she said check Radhika video (her second tweet) and come back and read this.”

Later, Dhanya and her supporters justified it, saying the newsletter was published a day before Mohanlal quit as AMMA chief. Since the content was related to AMMA, it was seemingly the apparent choice for Dhanya to use his picture! 

Here are a few more explanations given by her minions and supporters.

Another minion at TNM also did the same and urged people to read the article.

A writer at TNM also buttressed his paymaster Dhanya by calling out the ‘trolls‘.

Yet another minion at TNM begged people to read the article which had by then been removed from the paywall after the outrage.

Here comes her justification for the usage of Mohanlal’s picture.

These people kept insisting the netizens who questioned the usage of Mohanlal’s picture ‘read’ the article – looks like they tried to do something clickbait, but it backfired. Reader also added community notes which confirmed it was a misleading picture.

 

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