Politics

“I am blessed they make livelihoods spinning lies about me”: Rahul Gandhi responds to Cobrapost media expose

Taking a jibe at the media houses, Rahul Gandhi said, “For them, it’s just business; hate sold for a price as Cobrapost expose shows.”

 

Amidst the increasing clouds of suspicion around Congress-Cambridge Analytica link, Congress President Rahul Gandhi took it to Twitter to respond to the Cobrapost expose. Rahul Gandhi who is usually in attack mode seemed defensive this time.

The Cobrapost- a media organization which claims to be a non-profit media company pursuing investigative journalism recently had published one of its sting operations. The sting operation titled “Operation 136” revealed the names of 17 Indian media houses who were allegedly ready to push the communal agenda in exchange for cash.

During the sting operation, journalist Pushp Sharma posed as Acharya Atal and sometimes as a fellow from Ashram in Ujjain. He met several senior members of the 17 top media organizations in the country asking them to push ‘Soft-Hindutva’ through the news. The video of the sting operation allegedly also revealed that many of the people he met were ready to run content that would harm the prospect of the opposition coalition in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Many of them allegedly were open to run content against Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati. Surprisingly, the report also mentioned that they were ready to publish stories showing BJP’s Arun Jaitley, Jayant Sinha, Maneka Gandhi and Varun Gandhi in a negative light.

Responding to the report, Congress President Rahul Gandhi wrote a heartfelt message on his Twitter. He said that despite some people spreading hatred against him with fake stories, he can never hate them. Further taking a jibe at the media houses, he said, “For them, it’s just business; hate sold for a price.”

He also said that if their (media houses) livelihood is earned by “spinning lies” about him, then he feels blessed and honoured.

The Cobrapost sting named some of the big media houses including DNA, Dainik Jagran, Amar Ujala, India TV and ScoopWhoop. The sting operation was hit the Indian media amidst its rank slipping to 136 on World Press Freedom Index as assessed by the Reporters Without Borders in 2017.

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