Journalist Barkha Dutt has lashed out at NDTV, her former employer, accusing the channel of being a serial offender on censoring stories. She said that her ouster from the channel was because she spoke against ‘censorship’ by the channel.
Barkha wrote, “Can share @nitingokhale & I were punished for speaking on censorship of our work:@ndtv was hostile to us: we parted. We stuck to our stand.”
Can share @nitingokhale & I were punished for speaking on censorship of our work:@ndtv was hostile to us: we parted. We stuck to our stand https://t.co/nCDsrpKy6G
— barkha dutt (@BDUTT) October 18, 2017
Her angry outburst on Twitter came hours after NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain sensationally alleged that his story on Amit Shah’s son had been taken off the channel’s website.
Reacting to her former colleague’s post, Barkha wrote, “yes,axing stories at NDTV not new. And I don’t recall said ex colleagues standing up for freedom of press & reporting when some of fought it. (sic)”
yes,axing stories at NDTV not new. And I don’t recall said ex colleagues standing up for freedom of press & reporting when some of fought it https://t.co/Dmx1gZSfXO
— barkha dutt (@BDUTT) October 17, 2017
In her next tweet she sarcastically called NDTV a ‘self righteous humbug.’
She said, “I can certainly talk of my own stories that were axed @ndtv- perhaps happens in all newsrooms but never with this much self righteous humbug. My PC intvw axed:a story I led on a Congress bigwig was a big row: @nitingokhale intvw of ex Navy Chief axed.None of these folks spoke then. (sic)”
I can certainly talk of my own stories that were axed @ndtv– perhaps happens in all newsrooms but never with this much self righteous humbug https://t.co/Dmx1h09Rmo
— barkha dutt (@BDUTT) October 18, 2017
Barkha had left NDTV after being a key part of the channel for 21 years in January this year.
NDTV had allegedly dropped her interview with the former finance minister P Chidambaram despite running excerpts of that exclusive all through the day. The channel had released a statement but did not explain why it dropped the interview, which was critical of the Narendra Modi government on its surgical strikes claims.
She asked NDTV to release her ‘axed interview’ of Chidambaram, if dropping of stories was just an ‘aberration’ as claimed by Sreenivasan in his Facebook post.
NDTV was recently rumoured to have been in the process of being sold to the founder of SpiceJet, Ajay Singh, the man who helped Modi in the Lok Sabha election campaign in 2014. Although, the channel denied the report to SEBI, senior executives in the channel had confirmed the report.