Cobrapost on Friday released a second batch of video recordings shot as part of its sting operations \u2013 conversations with top journalists, managers and owners of some of the biggest TV channels and newspapers that showed they were ready to accept cash in order to carry Hindutva advertorials and advertisements.<\/p>\n
According to Cobrapost, \u201cIn the second part of Operation 136, Cobrapost has exposed owners and high-ranking personnel of more than two dozen media houses, both mainstream and regional, the biggest ones and the smaller ones, the oldest ones and the newer ones. \u2018Operation 136: Part II,\u2019 in fact, shows Indian media\u2019s underbelly in its most visceral form, where even the \u201cbig daddies\u201d do not mind agreeing to undertake a campaign that has the potential to not only cause communal disharmony among citizens but also tilt the electoral outcome in favour of a particular party.\u201d<\/p>\n
A journalist approached the media houses offering them cash to push this agenda, \u201cHowever, there were two notable exceptions, Bartaman Patrika<\/em> and the Dainik Sambad<\/em>, which refused to play ball. No amount of cajoling or inducements could bring them around,\u201d wrote Cobrapost on their site.<\/p>\n Ashis Mukherjee, AVP-Advertisement (In-house), Bartaman<\/em>, can be seen in the sting operation video repeatedly refusing to publish advertisements offered by the reporter who posed as \u201ca representative of a fictitious religious organization, Shrimad Bhagwad Gita Prachar Samiti”. He offered to pay money for the newspaper to carry an advertisement with religious content. Mukherjee repeatedly told the person that it was “Absolutely… not permissible.”<\/p>\n Why did Ashis Mukherjee refuse the offer most others found hard to resist? This is what Mukherjee told us:<\/p>\n \u201cI work on the principles set by our late Editor, the founder of Bartaman<\/em>, Barun Sengupta. He had clear instructions on which advertisements to accept and which ones to refuse. We don\u2019t publish any advertisement that can hurt someone\u2019s sentiment. The Constitution does not permit anything that hurts anyone\u2019s sentiment \u2013 whether it is personal or religious. We have certain responsibilities towards people.<\/p>\n When this man came to me some months back, naturally I had no idea that the conversation was being shot on camera. He first offered Rs 1.5 crore, then said it could go upto Rs 10 crore or even Rs 50 crore. Not for a moment I had an iota of doubt that this was meant to be refused. It went against the principles set by Barun Sengupta, and that\u2019s what we still stand for. I remember the time when a certain advertiser had proposed to Barun-babu that he would pay in advance on the condition that he would be offered advertisements at a special rate. Barun-babu refused him right away. He said all advertisers are equal in my eyes. The rate would be same for everyone, and he could not be biased towards or against anyone.<\/p>\n Bartaman does not do events sponsorship for publicity. That is another principle we follow. Organising events or involving ourselves in an event sponsorship would mean the others are inferior in some way.<\/p>\n After I had turned the \u201cadvertiser\u201d away, I informed the management about the episode. And at that time itself, they supported my decision. Now that this has surfaced as a sting operation, I am glad it shows how finicky we are about sticking to our principles and ethics.\u201d<\/p>\n Mukherjee said he was very nervous when he got to know today it was actually a sting operation. \u201cBiswash korun, ami khub chhaposha manush<\/em> (believe me, I am a simple, ordinary person). I didn’t like to be seen on camera. If at all there is a good thing about being seen in that video it is the fact that I knew I had turned down his offer.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am a simple, ordinary person, says Mukherjee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}