By Tanishka Sodhi / News Laundry
In the run-up to the opposition INDIA alliance’s blacklisting of 14 TV news anchors last week, almost all the members of the 26-party bloc’s coordination committee narrowed down on names of “partisan” anchors ahead of a joint discussion.
The anchors were selected on the basis of their “hateful” debates, anti-opposition narratives, attempts to black out issues of public interest, and even their social media profiles. Newslaundry learned that some parties pushed for a “complete ban” on news channels like Times Now, Republic TV and Sudarshan News.
In the alliance’s first coordination committee meeting on September 13, it was decided that no ban will be imposed on news channels, but the bloc’s representatives will not appear on the “hate-filled” shows of the 14 news anchors across nine channels.
The list named Aman Chopra, Amish Devgan and Anand Narasimhan of News 18; Chitra Tripathi and Sudhir Chaudhary of Aaj Tak; Gaurav Sawant and Shiv Aroor of India Today; Prachi Parashar of India TV; Arnab Goswami of Republic TV; Rubika Liyaquat of Bharat 24; Navika Kumar and Sushant Sinha of Times Now; Aditi Tyagi of Bharat Express; and Ashok Shrivastav of DD News.
RJD leader Manoj Jha, a member of the bloc’s media committee that issued the boycott list, told Newslaundry the list of anchors is “not exhaustive” and the “matter won’t end here”.
Sources in the media committee told Newslaundry that other anchors, such as Aaj Tak’s Anjana Om Kashyap, who are also perceived as journalists with allegiance to the Narendra Modi-government, were not boycotted because they were “relatively less hate-fuelled on social media”.
This story was originally published in newslaundry.com. Read the full story here