Editors Guild, Which Demanded Supreme Court Probe Into Tek Fog App, Keeps Mum On Swarajya’s Questions On ‘The Wire’ Pulling Down That Report

A request for a comment by Swarajya made to the Editors Guild of India (EGI) and its president Seema Mustafa on The Wire pulling down its report on ‘Tek Fog’ app, on which the Guild had sought Supreme Court intervention, has remained unanswered.

In January, heavily Left-leaning news and commentary portal The Wire published a report claiming that the Bharatiya Janata Party was using an app named 'Tek Fog' to manipulate social media trends and send automated abuses to certain journalists and commentators.

The portal claimed that its report was based on an unnamed ‘source’ and a Twitter user named 'Aarthi Sharma' (incidentally handle was created in August 2020). 'Aarthi Sharma' declared herself that she was a BJP 'IT cell employee' and was asked to use the app that allegedly bypassed reCAPTCHA codes and auto-uploads text and hashtags. 

The Wire said the app was led by BJP leader Devang Dave, who denied all allegations in an email to the portal. 

Dave’s response in January can be read in his tweets here.

After the recent embarrassment on its Meta-Amit Malviya link stories, which were called out as fake news, the portal quietly withheld its report on Tek Fog from public view last week and retracted it Meta stories. At the time of publishing this report, The Wire had issued an apology for Meta reports but not for the Tek Fog report.

In its 'apology', The Wire claimed that it had been 'subjected' to deception by a member of its Meta investigation team. This morning, the statement saw a footnote added to it saying that 'The person responsible is no longer working with The Wire in any capacity.'

When the Tek Fog story published in January, it attracted strong reactions from the Left-liberal section of the media, anti-BJP commentators and opposition leaders. They ignored valid criticism and loopholes in the stories to target the government.

Amid this, the EGI promptly issued a statement on 11 January demanding Supreme Court intervention.

“The latest instances of such organised trolling and harassment [of women journalists ‘outspokenly critical of the current government’] are revealed by the investigations done by The Wire, which laid bare an extensive and well funded network built around an app, Tek Fog, which steals unused Whatsapp accounts to send out toxic messages to targeted journalists. The purpose of these deeply hurtful messages was to instil fear in them and to prevent them from expressing themselves freely and go about their jobs,” said the statement, which can be read in full in a tweet posted by the verified Twitter account of the EGI here.

This statement is not present on the Guild’s website.

Swarajya’s request remained unanswered

Swarajya reached out to EGI president Seema Mustafa on Wednesday through email and text messages. Swarajya also emailed questioned to the EGI. 

Though Mustafa responded through email and text, promising that she would send her comments, there was no further response from her till the time of publishing this report – at least 24 hours after sending the communication. Further text messages and phone calls remained unanswered. Swarajya will update this report if a response is received. 

The EGI, which describes itself as a non-profit organisation founded in 1978 with the “twin objectives of protecting press freedom and for raising the standards of editorial leadership of newspapers and magazines”, has often attracted criticism for being heavily biased in favour of Left-leaning media. 

Its website says the current president is Seema Mustafa, who is also Editor of the portal The Citizen; general secretary is Sanjay Kapoor, also Editor of portal Hard News; and Treasurer is Anant Nath, also Editor of The Caravan.

Swarajya reached out to Kapoor for comments but he replied that he was no longer holding that post. 

The website says the EGI’s past presidents include Shekhar Gupta, who is Editor of portal The Print and Rajdeep Sardesai, who’s is Consulting Editor with TV Today Network.

In November 2020, Arnab Goswami resigned from the EGI on live TV, for “its absolute compromise with its editorial ethics”, while criticising then president Shekhar Gupta for “silence” on Palghar Sadhus lynching case and for ‘leading the compromise on Indian journalism’. 

The same month, journalist Patricia Mukim, who is Editor of Shillong Times, resigned from the EGI accusing it of defending only “celebrity” Editors and news anchors.

In August 2020, news channel Suvarna News called out the EGI for falsely stating that its journalists were attacked by “the city police” in Bengaluru during reporting.

The channel’s Editor-in-chief Ravi Hegde issued a statement clarifying that the attack came from the “rioting mob and not the Bangalore City Police, as was indicated in the statement released by Editors Guild of India…”

The admission of fake news by The Wire

The lengthy apology note by the portal issued today on its Meta reports, which can be read here, says, “The Wire acknowledges that the internal editorial processes which preceded publication of these stories did not meet the standards that The Wire sets for itself and its readers expect from it. To have rushed to publish a story we believed was reliable without having the associated technical evidence vetted independently is a failure of which we cannot permit repetition.”

The portal’s note on its retraction of Meta stories last week says, “Given the discrepancies that have come to our attention via our review so far, The Wire will also conduct a thorough review of previous reporting done by the technical team involved in our Meta coverage.”

The portal’s note on its quiet denial of public access to the Tek Fog reports says, “Update (October 23, 2022): This story has been removed from public view pending the outcome of an internal review by The Wire, as one of its authors was part of the technical team involved in our now retracted Meta coverage.”

Update: A day after Swarajya’s report, the verified Twitter account of EGI posted that they have withdrawn references to The Wire‘s Tek Fog report in their statement made in January.

The account posted today, “EGI withdraws references to the Wire story in statement from Jan 2022 on online harrasment of women journalists. Urges newsrooms to resist the temptation of moving fast on sensitive stories, circumventing due journalistic norms.”

The accompanying press statement says, “The Editors Guild of India had issued a statement on January 11, 2022 expressing deep concern about the online harassment and targetting of women journalists. Amongst other instances, the statement had also referred to a series of reports carried by the Wire on an app called the Tek Fog. Since the Wire has removed those stories as part of their internal review following serious questions on the veracity of their reporting, the Guild withdraws the references made to all those reports.”

Read the EGI’s post here.