India’s leftist cabal keeps talking about the right to free speech, but it turns out they aren’t quite as enthusiastic about the concept when it is used against them.
NDTV anchor Sanket Upadhyay yesterday called for a man to be jailed, and even tagged police accounts, all for the crime of letting NDTV reporters know what he thought of them. The entire incident began after fellow NDTV anchor Sonia Singh gloated about how NDTV hadn’t been named in the Rhea Chakraborty or Rakulpreet Singh cases. “One channel not named in this,N DTV wasn’t named in the Rhea Chakraborty, Rakulpreet Singh or Tablighi Jamaat cases either. Proud to stand alone at times like these. Credibility matters not FakeTRPS,” she tweeted.
Singh didn’t stop to consider the possibility that nobody watches NDTV, so it’s unlikely that anyone would have problems with its content, but a Twitter user responded to Sonia Singh. “True. NDTV and its employee are puppets or we can say #UrbanNaxals . They do not have guts to say truth, NDTV work on its anti national narrative. And btw race is for horses not ass+holes,” wrote Abhinav Swami, who has all of 174 Twitter followers.
Now this is the kind of abuse that all manner of journalists receive on an hourly basis on Twitter, but it appears that NDTV’s journalists are made of thinner skin. Singh’s colleague Sanket Upadhyay jumped to her defence. “Shameful abusive behaviour.” he wrote, while quote-tweeting the tweet.
“This man is not just abusive but has taken indecency to a whole new level. He should be in jail for this comment. @ashokgehlot51@PoliceRajasthan@jaipur_police action must be taken,” he wrote, tagging Rajashtan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and the Twitter handle of Rajasthan Police.
If tagging the Chief Minister of a state for being called an Urban Naxal and an A**hole on Twitter wasn’t bad though, Sonia Singh replied to the user too, threatening to complain to his employers. “Am sorry, this language is unacceptable & crass. While I regret your upbringing, I shall be making a formal complaint to your organisation for this harassment,” she replied.
Now anyone who’s spent any time on Twitter will know that being called names — harsh names, at times — isn’t particularly uncommon. But it’s extraordinary how NDTV’s journalists, who keep talking about freedom of speech, don’t want to take feedback from their own viewers. What’s worse, they want them to be jailed for speaking their minds, and even go ahead and tag Chief Ministers to pressure the police to take action against them, all for the crime of calling then an a**hole. Which just goes to indicate that left’s insistence on freedom of speech is nothing but an elaborate facade — the ones who spend most of the time calling other people fascists might just be the most fascist of all.
