Company type | News agency |
---|---|
Industry | Media, news media |
Founded | 9 December 1971 [1] |
Founder | Prem Prakash |
Headquarters | New Delhi |
Area served | India, South Asia |
Key people | |
Owner | ANI Media Private Limited [2] |
Website | aninews |
Asian News International (ANI) is an Indian news agency that offers syndicated multimedia news feed to news bureaus in India and elsewhere. [3] [4] [5] Established by Prem Prakash in 1971, it was the first agency in India to syndicate video news [6] and as of 2019, [update] is the biggest television news agency in India.
The news agency has been criticized for having served as a propaganda tool for the incumbent central government, [7] [8] distributing materials from a vast network of fake news websites, [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] and misreporting events. [7] [14]
Prem had started his career in the field of photography before being employed by Visnews (and Reuters) as a photojournalist, where he went on to cover some of the most significant historical events in post-independence India. [7] [8] A significant figure in the domain of news and documentary film-making in the 1970s, he commanded considerable respect among foreign journalists and film-makers, and were conferred with the MBE. [7] [8]
In 1971, Prem established ANI (initially TVNF, India's first television news feature agency) which gained extraordinary influence within the Congress Government. [7] TVNF played a key role in fulfilling Indira Gandhi's wishes of showcasing a positive image of India, having produced numerous films for Doordarshan, and went on to gain a monopoly in the sector. [7]
Smita Prakash, an alumna of Indian Institute of Mass Communication, joined ANI in around 1986 as an intern and was later inducted as a full-time employee. [7] Daughter of Inna Ramamohan Rao, former director of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, she married Prem's son Sanjiv in 1988 which furthered ANI's access within the government. [7] [8] In 1993, Reuters purchased a stake in ANI, and it was allowed to exert a complete monopoly over their India feed. [7]
By 2000, India had seen a boom of private 24x7 news channels; however, unsustainable revenue models meant that they did not have the capacity to hire video-reporters across the country. [7] This provided scope for massive expansion of ANI's domestic video-production capacities at the behest of Sanjiv, who had a meteoric rise through the ranks (along with Smita) courtesy his shrewd managerial instincts. [7] Asian Films TV was incorporated in 2000 to provide feed for newspapers and periodicals. [8] The Caravan though notes that most of its foot-soldiers were low-cost recruits, who had little to do with journalism. [7]
In 2000, the NDA government launched a Kashmir-based regional channel—DD Kashir, and ANI was allowed to produce its programs. [7] [8] By the end of 2005, ANI's business-model was faring impressively on a consistent basis and it shifted its office out of Gole Market, to a new five-storey building in R. K. Puram. [7] ANI continued to be trusted by the upcoming UPA governments, to the extent of Ministry of External Affairs choosing Smita to be a part of the two-member-strong contingent of Indian journalists at both of the joint press conferences between the incumbent prime ministers of India and the United States. [7]
In later 2000s, increasing charges of ANI feed and low quality of journalism coupled with the introduction of broadcast vans led to several national and regional channels unsubscribing them. [7] The launch of UNI TV in 2010 by Yashwant Deshmukh gave stiff competition as well. [7] However, Ishaan Prakash, Smita's son who joined the company in 2011, procured multiple units of LiveU, expanded ANI's overseas bureaus and enlisted into contracts with multiple state governments and multiple union ministries. [7] [8] A monopoly was again re-created and most of its competitors shut down, eventually. [7]
By late 2011, ANI accounted for about 99% of the Reuters feed and in FY 2017–18, they were paid ₹ 2.54 crore for the services. [8] Archive videos were sold at rates as high as ₹1,000 per second; in FY 2017–18, the firm reported revenues of ₹68.23 crore and a net profit of ₹9.91 crore. [8]
Long-form reports by The Caravan and The Ken, along with reports by other media watchdogs have detailed of the agency having served as a propaganda tool of the incumbent union government. [7] [8] [15]
The Caravan notes that for decades under Congress rule, ANI effectively served as the external publicity division of Ministry of External Affairs, showing the Army in a positive light and suppressing news about any internal discontent; the private nature of the organisation and the repute of its founder gave an air of non-partisan legitimacy to their videos. [7] During the peak-spans of militancy in the Kashmir conflict, ANI was the near-sole purveyor of video-footage, especially with Rao having been recruited as the media advisor to the state. [7] ANI grew even closer to the government after Bharatiya Janata Party was elected to power in 2014; effects have ranged from sympathetic covering of the political campaigns by BJP to reporters being highly confrontational, when dealing with politicians from opposition parties. [7] [8] [16]
In 2020, an investigation by EU DisinfoLab concluded that ANI had on multiple occasions published mostly anti-Pakistan and sometimes anti-China opinion pieces and news content, including opinion pieces falsely attributed to European politicians and other instances of disinformation, and that this material was known to have been sourced from a vast network of pro-India fake news websites run by a certain "Srivasta Group". [9] [10] [11] [12] [17] [18] The report noted that mainstream Indian news media regularly relies on content provided by ANI, and that ANI had on several occasions provided legitimacy and coverage to the entire "influence operation" run by the fake news network, which relied "more on ANI than on any other distribution channel" [to give it] "both credibility and a wide reach to its content". [9] A primary aim of this fake news coverage was to "discredit Pakistan" in international forums. [9] ANI is also believed to have played significant roles as allies of the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency; many of its videos depicted protests by fringe lobby groups and activists, on the aspects of human rights abuse in Pakistan. [7]
ANI has been also accused of misreporting events, by fact checkers certified by the Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). [7] [14] The Caravan came across several video footages from ANI, wherein logos of random television channels from Pakistan along with Urdu tickers were superimposed on news showcasing India in a positive light; their video editors have admitted to forging clips. [7]
On 20 July 2023, ANI falsely blamed Muslims for the sexual assault and rape of two Kuki women during the 2023 Manipur violence. [19]
Under a new management, ANI has been accused of practicing an aggressive model of journalism focused at maximum revenue output, where journalists were easily dispensable with. [7] [8] Multiple employees have accused ANI of not having any human resource management system and ill-treating their ex-employees. [7]
The Baptist Times is a website owned by the Baptist Union of Great Britain reporting on the Baptist Church in Britain.
The Caravan is an Indian English-language, long-form narrative journalism magazine covering politics and culture.
Josy Joseph is an Indian investigative journalist and author. He is the founder of Confluence Media, a platform-agnostic investigative journalism organization. He is an adjunt faculty at O. P. Jindal Global University
State-sponsored Internet propaganda is Internet manipulation and propaganda that is sponsored by a state. States have used the Internet, particularly social media to influence elections, sow distrust in institutions, spread rumors, spread disinformation, typically using bots to create and spread contact. Propganda is used internally to control populations, and externally to influence other societies.
Sudarshan News is an Indian right-wing news channel. It was founded in 2005 by Suresh Chavhanke, the chairman and editor-in-chief. Chavhanke was a long-term volunteer of the Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), also associating with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of RSS. He asserts that he practices ideology-driven journalism and prefers that the news programs on his channel be viewed as opinionated campaigns.
The East StratCom Task Force (ESCTF) is a part of the European External Action Service, focused on "effective communication" and promotion of European Union activities in Eastern Europe and beyond. The task force's flagship project is EUvsDisinfo, a database of articles and media which the organization considers as providing false, distorted or partial information.
Fake news websites are websites on the Internet that deliberately publish fake news—hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation purporting to be real news—often using social media to drive web traffic and amplify their effect. Unlike news satire, fake news websites deliberately seek to be perceived as legitimate and taken at face value, often for financial or political gain. Such sites have promoted political falsehoods in India, Germany, Indonesia and the Philippines, Sweden, Mexico, Myanmar, and the United States. Many sites originate in, or are promoted by, Russia, or North Macedonia among others. Some media analysts have seen them as a threat to democracy. In 2016, the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs passed a resolution warning that the Russian government was using "pseudo-news agencies" and Internet trolls as disinformation propaganda to weaken confidence in democratic values.
Republic TV, is an Indian right-wing conservative English-language news channel, launched on 6 May 2017, operated and owned by Republic Media Network co-founded by Arnab Goswami and Rajeev Chandrasekhar. It headquarters in Mumbai, India. Republic Media Network consists 3 other channels, Republic Bharat, Republic Bangla, Republic Kannada.
Fake news or information disorder is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue. Although false news has always been spread throughout history, the term fake news was first used in the 1890s when sensational reports in newspapers were common. Nevertheless, the term does not have a fixed definition and has been applied broadly to any type of false information presented as news. It has also been used by high-profile people to apply to any news unfavorable to them. Further, disinformation involves spreading false information with harmful intent and is sometimes generated and propagated by hostile foreign actors, particularly during elections. In some definitions, fake news includes satirical articles misinterpreted as genuine, and articles that employ sensationalist or clickbait headlines that are not supported in the text. Because of this diversity of types of false news, researchers are beginning to favour information disorder as a more neutral and informative term.
The Quint is an English and Hindi language Indian general news and opinion website founded by Raghav Bahl and Ritu Kapur after their exit from Network18. The publication's journalists have won three Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards and two Red Ink Awards.
Fake news in India refers to fostering and spread of false information in the country which is spread through word of mouth, traditional media and more recently through digital forms of communication such as edited videos, websites, blogs, memes, unverified advertisements and social media propagated rumours. Fake news spread through social media in the country has become a serious problem, with the potential of it resulting in mob violence, as was the case where at least 20 people were killed in 2018 as a result of misinformation circulated on social media.
Media in Jammu and Kashmir comprises a diverse landscape of print, electronic and digital media outlets. The region is served by a variety of newspapers, television channels, radio stations, and online news platforms, reflecting the cultural and linguistic diversity of the area.
The 2019 Balakot airstrike was a bombing raid conducted by Indian warplanes on 26 February 2019 in Balakot, Pakistan, against an alleged training camp of the terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed. Open source satellite imagery has revealed that no targets of consequence were hit. The following day, Pakistan shot down an Indian warplane and took its pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman, as prisoner. Indian anti-aircraft fire downed an Indian helicopter killing six or seven airmen on board, their deaths receiving perfunctory coverage by Indian media. India claimed that a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet was downed, but that claim has been debunked. The airstrike was used by India's ruling party to bolster its patriotic appeal in the general elections of April 2019.
The media coverage of the 2019 India-Pakistan standoff was criticised for largely being "jingoistic" and "nationalistic", to the extent of the media war-mongering and the battle being fought between India and Pakistan through newsrooms. During the escalation, fake videos and misinformation were prevalent on the social media which were further reported to escalate tensions between India and Pakistan. Once tensions started de-escalating, the media coverage shifted to comparisons being made between "India and Pakistan" and "Narendra Modi and Imran Khan" in terms of who won the "perception battle".
On 5 August 2019, the Government of India revoked the special status, or autonomy, granted under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir—a region administered by India as a state which consists of the larger part of Kashmir which has been the subject of dispute among India, Pakistan, and China since 1947.
Freedom of the press in India is legally protected by the Amendment to the constitution of India, while the sovereignty, national integrity, and moral principles are generally protected by the law of India to maintain a hybrid legal system for independent journalism. In India, media bias or misleading information is restricted under the certain constitutional amendments as described by the country's constitution. The media crime is covered by the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which is applicable to all substantive aspects of criminal law.
Godi media is a pejorative term coined and popularised by veteran journalist Ravish Kumar for the "sensationalist and biased Indian print and TV news media, which supports the ruling NDA government ". The term is a pun on the name of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has become a common way to refer to television and other media that are perceived as "mouthpieces" of the leading party of the NDA, the Bharatiya Janata Party.
NewsFront is a website based in Russian occupied Crimea. It describes itself as "a news agency that runs news in ten languages including Russian, German, English, Bulgarian, Georgian, French, and Spanish." In 2021, the United States Department of the Treasury described it as "a Crimea-based disinformation and propaganda outlet...particularly focused on supporting Russia-backed forces in Ukraine." According to owner Konstantin Knyrik, however, NewsFront is fighting an "information war" against unfair attacks on Russia.
SouthFront is a multilingual website registered in Russia and based in Crimea. It has been accused by multiple sources of being an outlet for disinformation and propaganda under the control of the Russian government. For this reason, it has been sanctioned by the US Treasury and banned by social media platforms.
The network was designed primarily to "discredit Pakistan internationally" and influence decision-making at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and European Parliament, EU DisinfoLab said.