India tv reporter forced to please Modi by fabricating original news, writes to PM

Delhi: A senior correspondent with India TV has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi complaining that his seniors had forced him to fabricate reports many a times, in order to please ‘The PM’

Imran Shaikh, said that the seniors in his channel owned by Rajat Sharma, have on many occasions asked him to fabricate reports to please the prime minister, Narendra Modi.

“Being journalist many a times I have been told to fabricate stories and also present them in fabricated manner in front of the common public which I have denied to do so. But it was explained by my seniors that they have to put some fabricated and favourable stories just to please our honourable prime minister as this news channel is bread and butter for them, which I personally feel it was just a false statement made by my seniors and didn’t believe them,” Imran wrote.

“But as the time was flying, my seniors was forcing me to get more and more fabricated and favourable news stories, due to this I was getting disturbed day by day and I started thinking that is it really favourable stories are demanded by some govermnmental authorities/politicians etc and I was thinking that I have (been) made a scapegoat by my seniors to run this news channel. (sic),” Imran added.

“I have been harassed by his seniors namely Faizul Islam, Rahul Chaudhary and Jai Prakash Chaudhary because of my ‘refusal to given in’ to their pressure to fabricate news,” Shaikh said while speaking to jantakareporter.com.

“Don’t get me wrong. I too was a fan of PM Modi. But for me journalistic ethics meant a lot. Often I would be called by my seniors to file favourable stories. But when I refused, they began to harass me and even suspended me for two days and initiated disciplinary twice in just one week,” he cleared the perplexity.

Shaikh said that he wanted an audience with the PM as his repeated efforts to meet Sharma had resulted in disappointment. “I have filed a defamation case against Chaudhary, Islam and Singh in a local court seeking damages worth just Rs 1” he added.

This sensational step by a reporter against his channel comes months after another journalist Vishwa Deepak resigned from Zee News questioning media ethics of the channel.