New Delhi: More than 400 Indian military veterans have alleged bias in the reportage of news agency Asian News International (ANI), laying out their concerns in a letter written to global media company Thomson Reuters.
The renowned news agency Reuters is the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, and shares a strategic partnership with ANI for content distribution.
In the letter, the veterans have taken exception to ANI’s coverage of a petition they filed before President Ram Nath Kovind and the Election Commission earlier this month, about what they claimed was the politicisation of the armed forces in this Lok Sabha election.
Among other things, in the petition to the EC and the President, over 150 veterans had objected to the “completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes”.
The Narendra Modi government has been slammed of late for citing the 26 February 2019 Balakot surgical strike on terror bases at election rallies.
ANI, in a report on the petition, suggested that some of the veterans had denied endorsing it. However, it was later reported that the news agency had misquoted veterans.
Talking to ThePrint, Major Priyadarshi Chowdhury (Retd), who wrote the letter on behalf of the veterans, said the BJP was blurring the line between the government and party, which had led to the politicisation of the armed forces.
“The mad rush for power at any cost, leads to lowering of our moral standards and our ethical fibre as citizens of this country,” he told ThePrint. “The mass propaganda backwash does not dictate who we are. Our conscience does. Hence, the petition.”
‘Serious questions arise’
In their letter to Thomson Reuters, the veterans said they were protesting against the “appropriation of the armed forces into political campaigning”.
“In this context, serious questions arise about ANI’s motives and practices in reporting the alleged denials by some senior officers that they had ever signed the letter,” the veterans wrote in their letter to Thomson Reuters.
“We believe that ANI has acted at the behest of India’s ruling party to manipulate quotes and defame our honourable intentions. In our opinion, ANI’s conduct tantamount to being perfidious with a view to influence the ongoing elections, in India, in a biased manner,” the letter said.
According to the veterans, the reason they were writing to Thomson Reuters was because it had an “investor relationship” and “strategic partnership” over ANI’s editorial content.
The letter further questioned how Thomson Reuters assured journalistic balance and whether it had evaluated or examined the practices, political affiliations, and reputation of ANI prior to expanding its strategic partnership in June 2018.
In the letter, the veterans sought to know if Thomson Reuters believed ANI’s “motivated misreporting” of their appeal met its own standards for editorial propriety.
“It is up to Thomson Reuters to evaluate whether such conduct by an investee company meets your mission statement of ‘….we do business according to the highest standards of ethical and responsible conduct’,” the letter states.