How the Modi government ‘monitors’ the media

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Editor's note: July 2018 marked Punya Prasun Bajpai’s fourth month at ABP News. It was also his last. On 6 July, the seasoned television journalist ran a momentous fact-check on his prime-time show “Master Stroke”. It was about a government programme aired in June that year, where a farmer from Chhattisgarh had told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that her income had doubled after a scheme was introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party government. The timing of the programme was crucial. Chhattisgarh was only five months away from an assembly election. But Bajpai was on to something. He sent a reporter to Chhattisgarh. The farmer told the news channel that her income had not doubled at all. In fact, it had remained stagnant, she said, making the government scheme seem irrelevant. The village chief alleged that she was coached by government officials to lie before the cameras. Bajpai ran the story soon after. Meanwhile, 10 kilometres away from the ABP News studio in Noida, on the tenth floor of the Soochna Bhawan in Delhi’s Lodhi Road, a staffer at a government-created media monitoring …