QUESTIONS RAISED AFTER ECONOMIC TIMES' SELECTIVE REPORTING ON COBRAPOST STING OPERATION

Financial daily, Economic Times' controversial story on May 25 on a sting operation by Cobrapost on Paytm raised many questions. Cobrapost is an investigative website that had released 27 video recordings of its sting operations with 27 media houses and a payments company- Paytm.

However, Economic Times' short, 350-word story on the operation concentrated only on the sting mission on Paytm. The video reportedly was a recording of a conversation between an undercover reporter posing as a Hindutva activist and Paytm's senior vice president Ajay Shekhar Sharma. In the video, Sharma reveals that the Prime Minister's Office had allegedly requested them to reveal information of users from Kashmir.

ET's story, however, mentioned nothing about the rest of CobraPost's investigations. One of the major names that came to light from the operation was the Times Group and its managing director, Vineet Jain. The recording consists of Jain's conversation talking of a deal of Rs 500 crore to promote Hindutva agenda and messages, which was selectively ignored by ET.

The story was posted by ET-Rise on May 25 and was reportedly removed within eight hours. However, according to reports, this is not entirely uncommon for the Times Group. Reportedly, three stories have been deleted by Times in the last one year alone, following scandals.