NDTV’s Ravish Kumar apologises for peddling Fake News against govt on Farmers crisis

After getting caught for peddling fake news about paddy procurement by the government, controversial NDTV news anchor Ravish Kumar has now apologized for spreading fake news. The controversial NDTV news anchor Ravish Kumar took to Facebook to post an apology after he admitted to making a ‘mistake’ of putting false information without verifying facts.

In his Facebook post, Ravish Kumar said that he had made a mistake in the last episode of his prime time show where he was “highlighting the distortion of data by the government”, however, the information that was put out was not complete.

“The information is incomplete and therefore it is not correct. In this event, a mistake was also committed by me in the episode of 14 January. The analysis of a tweet put out by the Railway Minister turned out to be a mistake,” said Ravish Kumar in his Facebook post.

In his Facebook post, he further asks “Godi Media’ to “Think about the kind of misunderstanding being spread”. Further he says, “Notice has been issued on this. I’d reply but the surprising thing is I catches many mistakes and lies in my program is no answer”.

While apologising, Ravish Kumar continued to blame the government and also, claiming that he catches many such lies in his program and the government has never answered for those, and hence, he is the bigger person for responding to the notice sent to him.

However, Ravish Kumar, as usual resorting to his false propaganda, had alleged that as per data available on the website of Food and Public Distribution ministry, the total paddy procurement in 2019-20 was 519 LMT, not 423 LMT, therefore the increase in the procurement is not 26% as claimed by the government. He said that either someone has made a mistake in the govt of India, or wrong numbers are being used to spread falsehood.

The union government has taken a strong objection to the fake news peddled by Ravish Kumar, and has confirmed that the paddy procurement upto 10 January 2020 was 423 LMT. And therefore, it is correct that the procurement has gone up by 26% in the said period. The ministry termed the program a ‘shocking display of poor journalism and sheer disregard of actual facts’.

The letter sent to the NDTV Ethics committee by the Press Information Bureau’s Additional Director General has said that Ravish Kumar has done an unfair comparison of full year procurement of 2019-20 with ongoing procurement for 2020-21. It also states that Piyush Goyal’s tweet was cropped in the TV program, giving the impression that it was a malafide act.