News is the new fuel these days. The whole world functions on live news that are available 24/7. Earlier in the Doordarshan days, there were two slots when the news would be read in order to make people aware of what is happening across the globe. They were simple and non-dramatic readings that just passed information. Now it’s a different scene. It is more of 360-degree entertainment with action, romance, pathos and melodrama like soap operas. The news readers not just read the news but also project their acting skills and dialogue delivery aptitude.
It is critical to understand that journalism is essential to advancing openness, accountability and democracy and that any country’s growth and development depend on a robust media environment. Additionally, it is also critical to recognise that all facets of journalism have the potential to fail in different ways and that any criticism of journalistic methods should be done tactfully. One form of journalism that works more like influencing is leftist journalism which focuses more on blaming than change. Journalism does not mean putting the state and the government down all the time. Journalism means stating facts. Unfortunately, the leftist journalism that has seeped into our country strongly, only believes in injecting negativity.
‘The Wire’, a Marxist propaganda website, shut down its Marathi branch six months ago. It’s interesting that this self-proclaimed free, fair, and courageous journalism died and no one noticed for six months. Marathi journalist Nikhil Wagle referenced Marathi Wire’s six-month closure in a tweet that he deleted after some time. The founder of “The Wire,” Siddharth Varadrajan, was criticised by Mr Wagle in this tweet for failing to compensate the Marathi journalists who worked for “The Wire’s” Marathi division.
On April 20, 2023, Nikhil Wagle tweeted that Marathi The Wire closed operations six months ago due to financial issues. Two journalists, Sujay Shastri and Nitin Brahme, were unemployed. Even the proper recompense was not given to them. Unanticipated behaviour from Siddharth Varadarajan. After some time, Nikhil Wagle, however, removed this tweet. He explained the deletion of this tweet by posting another tweet on his timeline. Nikhil Wagle tweeted an explanation, saying that he deleted the tweet in good faith as he was asked to do it. He also mentioned that the facts remained the same. He suggested that the Marathi edition of The Wire has been treated disrespectfully. Regional publications are consistently treated in this manner. In an interesting response to Nikhil Wagle, Marathi Twitter user Amol Kale commented, “Speak in Marathi, don’t flaunt English.” After some time passed, Nikhil Wagle also deleted this tweet with an explanation.
The Marathi adaptation of “The Wire” debuted in 2017 with the aim of taking advantage of progressive Maharashtra’s rich ground, the so-called “renaissance” state. The use of the three magic words “Phule-Shahu-Ambedkar” to unnecessarily criticise upper caste Hindus in the state has become normalised by parties like the Nationalist Congress Party and Indian National Congress. The Wire determined that this state was best suited for advancing its agenda of exploiting faultlines in the Hindu community. However, the attempt utterly failed.
The main cause of the failure is that the so-called progressive movement in Maharashtra has sided with Sharad Pawar’s course of action. For all intents and purposes, Maharashtra’s version of progressive thought is a quasi-Bahujan ideology that, surprisingly, places Maratha, a Kshatriya upper caste, at the centre of its beneficiaries and decision-makers. Therefore, liberal Marathi readers frequently favour well-known Marathi newspapers’ websites, such as Loksatta, Maharashtra Times, and Divya Marathi, as well as portals like Bol Bhidu, Saheb, etc. Every two weeks, experienced Marathi journalist Bhau Torsekar sets a new record for subscribers and viewers on non-traditional digital news platforms like YouTube channels. The Analyser, another YouTube channel run by Sushil Kulkarni and Shrikant Umrikar, has also drawn a lot of attention in the Marathi state.
The objective of The Wire Marathi was hardly achieved because, by 2014, Maharashtrians had openly abandoned leftist and liberal ideas in favour of Hindu nationalism. Because of this, The Wire Marathi struggled to gain any momentum during its five years of operation. Elite lefty Marathi readers could be served by websites like BBC Marathi. The infrequent, lengthy marches by farmers’ organisations have a positive impact on the anti-Modi attitude among Maharashtra’s liberal lefties. The Wire Marathi was actually ignored by Maharashtra’s Marxist movement. The financial problem mentioned by Nikhil Wagle also suggests a lack of readership and low levels of acceptance that pose a threat to survival in the absence of income from web traffic. It is clear that “The Wire Marathi” perished without being noticed given the extent to which the Maharashtrian populace supports the Hindutva ideology.
In the Indian media business, a battle is being waged. The business, which up until now had a leftist propaganda problem, now seems to be progressively moving to the right. Newspapers and television networks that were once widely read have lost their lustre and are in decline. And these media outlets, unwilling to accept the change, are criticising the new, up-and-coming outlets for supporting what they refer to as the “right-wing forces”
What could be the causes of the decline of media outlets that turned into communist propaganda factories? The Left’s deceitful techniques are no longer acceptable to the populace. As they fully grasped that the lofty-sounding ideas couldn’t make their lives better, they stopped being drawn to romanticised terms like socialism and equitable society. The left-leaning media’s persistent efforts to advance Islamism under the guise of liberalism are another significant factor in their collapse. Left-leaning political groups began escalating violence by taking advantage of the social rifts already present because they were unable to accept the rise of nationalist movements. The Left has actively contributed to inciting violence, whether it is in Delhi during the Shaheen Bagh Islamist revolt or in the United States following the passing of George Floyd. People also don’t like the role that many media outlets played, which went over and above to legitimise the violence and anarchy.
It is a well-known truth that these media outlets received support from succeeding Congress administrations. They had unrestricted access to the halls of power in the guise of collecting scoops, and they even succeeded in reshaping themselves into power brokers. The infamous Radia Gauge uncovered several ‘five-star’ journalists’ shady business practices, in which they sold their journalistic souls to Satan in exchange for money and power. Following the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the BJP, taking office, this type of unrestricted access was reduced. They fiercely criticised the Modi-led administration because they were unable to accept their diminished importance. However, their approach backfired and resulted in the consolidation of nationalist forces, which was detrimental to them. Even a group of journalists sympathetic to nationalism’s cause emerged as a result of it.
Through their opinion pieces and social media posts, the media outlets and their journalists, who are consumed with their pathological hatred for the Modi-led union government, even served as the mouthpieces of the adversarial countries. The anti-Indian rants of these journalists were used by adversary countries like Pakistan and China to malign India internationally. People hated the type of journalism these journalists practised as a result of the behaviour of these journalists, which caused a lot of distress.
Even in India, nationalist emotions are at an all-time high, as they are in many other parts of the world. People desire unbiased reporting that is fair. They want the media to stop engaging in “vulture journalism” and support the nation. They want the stigmatisation of Hindus in their country’s media to end. They also no longer want to support the communist media, which has been slaves to the “first family” and turned India’s magnificent old party into their personal business. They prefer to refer to all of these media entities as “Lutyens Media” and abhor them.
The Lutyens media frequently discusses the economy these days, using the downturn as a tool to criticise the Modi-led union government. In doing so, they entirely absolved the Chinese Wuhan virus of responsibility for the recession. However, they willfully omitted the reality that the same Wuhan virus from China seriously damaged their company, forced them to lay off staff, put their content behind paywalls, and relied heavily on sponsored content.
The new, developing media organisations, who were able to precisely read the public’s views, are outpacing their rivals while the communist media stubbornly persists in pushing its agenda. For instance, the relatively new Republic TV, run by Arnab Goswami, outperformed its long-standing media outlets in terms of drawing more viewers. According to the most recent data made available by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) of India, Times Now came in second place to the stations owned by Republic Media Network in the English and Hindi news category.
The channels that were infamous for being Left-Islamist propaganda engines are nowhere to be found. These old channels, however, are not yet prepared to graciously accept their defeat. The newsreaders on these networks do their utmost to paint the developing media outlets in an unfavourable light by attempting to assign reasons to their journalistic methods. Their social media rants are an expression of their resentment. Their unhappiness stems from their incapacity and unwillingness to realise that this is a new India and that their only options are to change their course or gracefully fade away.
India is becoming powerful and intelligent day by day. It refuses the non-growth agendas and believes in the “Nation First” theory. People cannot be bullied into anti-Hindu narratives and Islamist sympathy. Soon all the leftist WIRES will be cut itself. What’s best for the Nation will remain.
