Post by t-bob on Oct 18, 2022 17:00:22 GMT -5
Indian outlet on defensive after its explosive claims of Meta political censorship
The Wire is investigating its own reporting. It had alleged Instagram let the ruling party tamper with posts.
By Gerry Shih, Niha Masih, Joseph Menn and Naomi Nix
October 18, 2022 at 1:52 p.m. EDT
A man uses a smartphone in Mumbai. (Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg News)
NEW DELHI — Last week, The Wire, a small but gutsy Indian news outlet, seemed to land one explosive punch after another on Meta, the social media giant that owns Instagram and Facebook.
The California company had given an influential official from India’s ruling party the extraordinary power to censor Instagram posts that he didn’t like, The Wire reported, citing a document leaked by a Meta insider. A day later, The Wire reported that Meta executives were scrambling to find the mole who leaked the story, citing a new internal email the publication had obtained.
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Finally, after Meta executives denied both reports on social media — and, in an unusual move, insisted that The Wire’s documents appeared fabricated — The Wire released a lengthy rebuttal on Saturday that the outlet said would lay to rest any doubts about its reporting.
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It did not. Instead, The Wire is now investigating itself.
The publication said Tuesday it launched an internal review of its stories about Meta, adding a new twist to a sensational dispute between a reputed Indian news organization and a powerful Silicon Valley company — a clash that has captivated the technology and media industries in both India and the United States.
The investigation came after a bitter week during which Meta and The Wire accused each other of fabrication. But Wire editors were pressed to review their work after technology experts in both countries pointed out a mounting list of apparent discrepancies in videos and emails that the outlet had presented as proof of its reporting.
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The final straw came Tuesday. One of the experts that Wire journalists said had served as a technical consultant said that he never helped with the outlet’s reporting. The expert, Kanishk Karan, told The Washington Post that he was informed that Wire staffer Devesh Kumar had showed his boss, Wire founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan, an email from Karan that supported Kumar’s reporting. But Karan had never sent that email, he said.
Karan did not accuse Kumar of fabricating the email. But, he said: “I don’t know who created it. It is a fake impersonation of me used in the story without my knowledge or consent.”
Kumar said, “I have no clarity as to what happened between Kanishk and I, but I will get to the bottom of it. … I’m not hiding something.”
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In a statement, The Wire said, “In the light of doubts and concerns from experts about some of this material, and about the verification processes we used — including messages to us by two experts denying making assessments of that process directly and indirectly attributed to them in our third story — we are undertaking an internal review of the materials at our disposal.” It added that it would remove its stories “from public view.”
With a staff of about two dozen people, The Wire has often been lauded as a rare voice of journalistic courage at a time when many Indian outlets, particularly television networks, hew close to the government’s line. And Varadarajan, the editor, was seen not only as a thorn in the government’s side but also a probable target of surveillance. In 2021, forensic analysis conducted by Amnesty International found that Varadarajan’s phone was infected with the Pegasus spyware, which is sold only to government clients.
(The Wire was a reporting partner with The Washington Post and other news organizations in the Pegasus Project, a global investigation of government spyware, last year.)
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The growing questions about The Wire’s integrity and accuracy have damaged the credibility “of an independent and trusted news platform that India needs today,” said Apar Gupta, head of the Internet Freedom Foundation in New Delhi.
“This outcome is tragic,” Gupta said, “because it has focused public energy [more] on fact-checking The Wire than continuing the need for human rights assessments of Silicon Valley platforms.”
The saga has been particularly charged in India because it touches one of the biggest criticisms Silicon Valley has faced in recent years — that powerful companies, including Meta, have abetted abuse and disinformation around the world and facilitated censorship by authoritarian governments.
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In India, a massive and important internet market, Meta has for years been accused of turning a blind eye to hate speech made by government supporters against India’s religious minorities, particularly Muslims. Meta has also been accused of being overly deferential toward the government when it comes to content moderation decisions. In 2020, a top Meta executive in India resigned after the Wall Street Journal reported that she warned her staff against enforcing hate-speech rules upon Hindu nationalist figures linked with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Wire seemed to confirm those long-standing suspicions when it published a damning story on Oct. 10 alleging Meta gave special privileges to Amit Malviya, who heads the BJP’s IT department and social media efforts, as part of the company’s internal “cross-check” program, which shields VIP users from usual speech enforcement procedures. According to The Wire, Instagram records leaked by a Meta employee showed that Instagram removed a post satirizing a BJP politician simply because it had been reported by Malviya
The Wire is investigating its own reporting. It had alleged Instagram let the ruling party tamper with posts.
By Gerry Shih, Niha Masih, Joseph Menn and Naomi Nix
October 18, 2022 at 1:52 p.m. EDT
A man uses a smartphone in Mumbai. (Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg News)
NEW DELHI — Last week, The Wire, a small but gutsy Indian news outlet, seemed to land one explosive punch after another on Meta, the social media giant that owns Instagram and Facebook.
The California company had given an influential official from India’s ruling party the extraordinary power to censor Instagram posts that he didn’t like, The Wire reported, citing a document leaked by a Meta insider. A day later, The Wire reported that Meta executives were scrambling to find the mole who leaked the story, citing a new internal email the publication had obtained.
Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Finally, after Meta executives denied both reports on social media — and, in an unusual move, insisted that The Wire’s documents appeared fabricated — The Wire released a lengthy rebuttal on Saturday that the outlet said would lay to rest any doubts about its reporting.
Story continues below advertisement
It did not. Instead, The Wire is now investigating itself.
The publication said Tuesday it launched an internal review of its stories about Meta, adding a new twist to a sensational dispute between a reputed Indian news organization and a powerful Silicon Valley company — a clash that has captivated the technology and media industries in both India and the United States.
The investigation came after a bitter week during which Meta and The Wire accused each other of fabrication. But Wire editors were pressed to review their work after technology experts in both countries pointed out a mounting list of apparent discrepancies in videos and emails that the outlet had presented as proof of its reporting.
Story continues below advertisement
The final straw came Tuesday. One of the experts that Wire journalists said had served as a technical consultant said that he never helped with the outlet’s reporting. The expert, Kanishk Karan, told The Washington Post that he was informed that Wire staffer Devesh Kumar had showed his boss, Wire founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan, an email from Karan that supported Kumar’s reporting. But Karan had never sent that email, he said.
Karan did not accuse Kumar of fabricating the email. But, he said: “I don’t know who created it. It is a fake impersonation of me used in the story without my knowledge or consent.”
Kumar said, “I have no clarity as to what happened between Kanishk and I, but I will get to the bottom of it. … I’m not hiding something.”
Story continues below advertisement
In a statement, The Wire said, “In the light of doubts and concerns from experts about some of this material, and about the verification processes we used — including messages to us by two experts denying making assessments of that process directly and indirectly attributed to them in our third story — we are undertaking an internal review of the materials at our disposal.” It added that it would remove its stories “from public view.”
With a staff of about two dozen people, The Wire has often been lauded as a rare voice of journalistic courage at a time when many Indian outlets, particularly television networks, hew close to the government’s line. And Varadarajan, the editor, was seen not only as a thorn in the government’s side but also a probable target of surveillance. In 2021, forensic analysis conducted by Amnesty International found that Varadarajan’s phone was infected with the Pegasus spyware, which is sold only to government clients.
(The Wire was a reporting partner with The Washington Post and other news organizations in the Pegasus Project, a global investigation of government spyware, last year.)
Story continues below advertisement
The growing questions about The Wire’s integrity and accuracy have damaged the credibility “of an independent and trusted news platform that India needs today,” said Apar Gupta, head of the Internet Freedom Foundation in New Delhi.
“This outcome is tragic,” Gupta said, “because it has focused public energy [more] on fact-checking The Wire than continuing the need for human rights assessments of Silicon Valley platforms.”
The saga has been particularly charged in India because it touches one of the biggest criticisms Silicon Valley has faced in recent years — that powerful companies, including Meta, have abetted abuse and disinformation around the world and facilitated censorship by authoritarian governments.
Story continues below advertisement
In India, a massive and important internet market, Meta has for years been accused of turning a blind eye to hate speech made by government supporters against India’s religious minorities, particularly Muslims. Meta has also been accused of being overly deferential toward the government when it comes to content moderation decisions. In 2020, a top Meta executive in India resigned after the Wall Street Journal reported that she warned her staff against enforcing hate-speech rules upon Hindu nationalist figures linked with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Wire seemed to confirm those long-standing suspicions when it published a damning story on Oct. 10 alleging Meta gave special privileges to Amit Malviya, who heads the BJP’s IT department and social media efforts, as part of the company’s internal “cross-check” program, which shields VIP users from usual speech enforcement procedures. According to The Wire, Instagram records leaked by a Meta employee showed that Instagram removed a post satirizing a BJP politician simply because it had been reported by Malviya
