By Ranjona Banerji
Is it wilful suspension of disbelief, as one journalist friend described it?
Or is it a blind following of orders from above, as another pointed out?
Rank stupidity or greed?
Evil or weak?
Could be both or either, but the case of Narendra Modi being a strong contender for the Nobel Peace Prize according to the Nobel Prize committee, is one more tragic piece of evidence in the fall of the Indian media.
A shady website connected to a BJP propaganda website known for its fake news and Islamophobia put out the news that a member of the Nobel committee, Asle Toje, said that the Indian prime minister is a strong contender for the next Nobel Peace Prize.
This “news” was picked up by the mainstream media and presented as news on mainstream websites and by prominent TV anchors on their social media accounts.
The examples presented here are largely from Bennett Coleman’s newspaper The Times of India and its TV channel Times Now. But several others, like CNBC News 18 also featured here, did pick up this “news” from the shady website which was amplified, ha ha ha, by ANI. The BJP High Command’s chosen news agency which knows that news is about to happen before those involved know it’s about to happen.
Toje issued a strong statement saying that he never said what was attributed to him, that it was fake news, and should be treated as all fake news: given no oxygen.
Maybe that’s possible in Norway.
But not in this India, where fake news gets all the help it can to flourish and news itself gets suffocated and suppressed.
It is not uncommon for the media to be brazen about errors – we’ve all done it. And I suppose if you are consistently caught out for promoting lies to benefit one person or political entity, you become immune to barbs and embarrassment. That is why the 
two tweets here from Times Now’s Rahul Shivshankar are bland and minus any self-awareness. He’s editor-in-chief of this TV channel, screams and spreads Islamophobia and lies about India’s growth night after night, attacks anyone who points to people suffering. A little mistake in hoping that his King Emperor gets a big prize is not even a mosquito bite. In fact, one may conjecture there are rewards for amplifying lies, even if you do get caught out.
I am as ever more shocked by the group’s newspaper, The Times of India. I know many readers have nicknamed TOI “toilet paper”, but on the whole print presents much news better than television. I personally find the edits and opinions expressed in TOI largely rubbish and this appears to have been a deliberate decline over the last decade.
But that someone on a desk actually believed something this like – there is no precedence to someone from a Nobel committee leaking information about the next Peace Prize winner – without checking is shocking. Unlike many, I have far more faith in sub-editors and news desks than I do in reporters. Thus, something like this irks even more.
It is also amusing that BJP’s media supporters are so keen for this Nobel Peace Prize. Sometimes they hate foreign interest in India. Bharat is great enough by itself, is their contention. Sometimes they fall over themselves with joy when some foreigner acknowledges something, from a fake award from a suspicious character to Modi to an Oscar for a song. Then they fall apart with rage from any criticism.
Fake patriotism coupled with overwhelming love can make life really tough…
It also helps one to avoid the news completely.
Like the news that an Overseas Friends of BJP activist, Sydney-based Balesh Dhankhar, who organised a Modi event in Australia, is being tried for raping many Korean women.
This news was only picked up by the Indian media after it went viral on social media. Imagine if the accused belonged to any other Indian political party…
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.