India’s ruling Bhartiya Janata Party’s IT Head, Amit Malviya, said he would file civil and criminal charges against The Wire after reported in a now-retracted story that Meta, the U.S.-based social media giant, granted him extraord𝓡inary powers to censor Instagram posts.
M🐭alviya vowed to file a suit against the news website for publishing “forged docu𓄧ments with a view to malign and tarnish my reputation.”
Malviya taking down posts
Malviya’s ♒planned legal action comes after The Wire, known for its critical reporting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, wrote a series of sensational stories this month that claimed Malviya had been granted special powers by Meta to take down posts on Instagram without any input from the company’s content moderators.
To back this up, The Wire published screenshots of internal reports and emails it said it had accessed from sources within Meta. But former Meta employees and whistleblowers, tech experts in India and Silicon Valley, and Meta itself said the claims were untrue and ques💜tioned the authenticity of the evidence.
‘Hope that The Wire is the victim of this hoax’
“We accept scrutiny of our content decisions, but we fundamentally reject these false allegations based on what we believe to be fabricated evidence. We hope that The Wi🉐re is the victim of this hoax, not the perpetrator,” Meta sa♚id in a statement.
Nonetheless, The Wire doubled down and followed up with more stories claiming the internal emails it had accessed were true, even though independent technical experts continued to cast doubts on its findings and said the documentജs it made public appeared to be forged.
Story retracted
Amid mounting criticism, The Wire l𝓰ast week retracteꦇd its articles and opened an internal review of its reporting and editorial processes. The news website said it had found inconsistencies in its stories but stopped short of saying they were fabricated.
On Thursday, however, the publication pos💛ted a public apology on its website and said that one unnamed member of its staff had deceived the organization and that it lacked the ཧexpertise to vet technical stories.
“To have rushed to publish a story we believed was reliable without having the associated t꧙echnical evidence vetted independently is a failure of which we cannot permit repeജtition,” The Wire said in a statement.
The news website also said it would conduct a🧸 thorough review of previous reporting done⛦ by “the technical team involved in our Meta coverage” and remove the stories from public view until that process is complete.
‘Temptation to move fast on sensitive stories’
The Wire’s stories had fueled growing concerns in India about digital privacy and the government’s efforts to tightly control🧸 the internet, and at least one opposition party had said it would discꦛuss the issue in Parliament.
Meanwhile, media watchdog The Editors Guild of India on Frꦛiday said it was “disturbed” by the events and urged Indian news🉐rooms to “resist the temptation of moving fast on sensitive stories.”
(With inputs from AP)
