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Resignations of two journalists at ABP News cause disquiet in newsrooms.
A day after the departure of ABP News Channel’s Managing Editor Milind Khandekar, it has emerged that fellow journalist Punya Prasun Bajpai also quit the news organisation. Bajpai confirmed his resignation on Thursday, but he would not elaborate on the details.
Bajpai hosted a most popular primetime show on ABP NEWS it’s called Masterstroke.
ABP News Network has not issued a statement about the depatures. But Avinash Pandey, the ABP News chief operating officer, told exchange4media that Mr. Khandekar had been instrumental in shaping and strengthening the editorial structure at the organisation “His service has been indeed much valuable to the organisation,” Pandey said. “It has been an honor working with a wonderful colleague like him all these past years. We wish him boundless success in all his future endeavors.”
Last month, the channel elicted strong comments from the government for a story on Masterstroke in the wake of a video interaction (Mann Ki Baat) Prime Minister Narendra Modi held on June 20 with beneficiaries of various government programmes. A participant from Chhattisgarh, Chandramani Kaushik, told Modi on the show said that her income had doubled after she switched from cultivating paddy to growing custard apples.
But Masterstroke proved that the woman had been tutored to make false claims.
The programme gained wider attention when Congress President Rahul Gandhi tweeted a clip of it.
The programme was criticised by number of Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, including Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, the minister of state for information and broadcasting. He alleged that journalists had been driven by an agenda to oppose Narendra Modi.
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also tweeted her criticism of the story.
ABP News sent a reporter back to the woman’s village to re-investigate. “This is ABP News’ response to the questions you have raised,” they tweeted on Monday night, addressing the ministers who had dubbed their report “fake news”.
Following this episode, BJP officials began to boycott the channel but public was very happy to see the truth on their tv screens.
In addition, Many twitter users (Vinod Kapri is the 1st person who wrote about it) had complained that they had been unable to get access to ABP news at the time when Masterstroke, Bajpai’s show, was being aired. People familiar with the network said disturbances in the channel’s signal began around July 13.
“Things began to change after the first week of July,” said a senior journalist in the channel who did not want to be identified. “We persisted with whatever we were doing. For us, news is news. But we are living through polarised times, where whatever you do is seen as pro-Modi, anti-Modi.”
On July 26, Bajpai tweeted that instead of paying any attention to starvation deaths, unemployment, farmer suicides, clean air and water, the focus seemed only to be on disrupting the signals of his programme, Masterstroke.
Deb's Blog 