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New Delhi: The head of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s IT cell, Amit Malviya, said on Thursday that he would be filing civil and criminal cases against The Wire for allegedly “forging” documents to “tarnish [his] reputation.”
On October 10, The Wire had published the first of four articles (all now retracted) claiming that Meta, the parent company of Instagram, had granted Malviya the ability to take down posts he objected to by not subjecting complaints he filed to review by the company. The story was based on a purported Instagram incident report that Meta says “appears to have been fabricated”.
In its apology to readers on Wednesday night, The Wire acknowledged “that the internal editorial processes which preceded publication of its Meta stories did not meet the standards that we set for ourselves and our readers expect from us” but also noted that a member of its Meta investigation team had deceived the publication with inauthentic material.
Malviya on October 27 released a statement o Twitter saying he will sue The Wire for allegedly “forging documents” for a story to “malign and tarnish my reputation”.
On The Wire… pic.twitter.com/ElZNC9yVuO
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) October 27, 2022
Asked for its reaction to Malviya’s tweet, The Wire issued a short statement, the text of which is appended below.
Statement by The Wire
October 27, 2022
“Journalists rely on sources for stories and do their best to verify material they receive. Technological evidence is more complicated and the usual due diligence may not always reveal the fraud perpetrated upon a publication. This is what happened to us.
“In the life of any publication, an occasion may come when it is misinformed. The moral test is whether the publication persists or speaks the truth. We chose the latter when we realised we had been given fraudulent information.
“Whether the person who brought all the material to The Wire deceived us at anyone’ else’s behest or acted on his own is a matter that will be subjected to judicial process in due course. The malintent to discredit The Wire is obvious.
“Other than this, we have nothing to say.”