Gautam Adani-led Adani Group has recently acquired 29% stakes in Indian media house NDTV. As per reports, Adani plans to further acquire another 26% stakes from shareholders by giving out an open public offer. This would give the Adani Group majority rights of 55% thereby reducing NDTV founder-promoters Radhika Roy and Prannoy Roy’s control over the channel.
In this backdrop, a viral image showing a tweet from NDTV’s senior journalist Ravish Kumar is doing rounds on social media. The text in the tweet reads that NDTV has now become Narendra Damodardas TV, and we have lost as a society. Many users are sharing the image mocking the journalist.
A Facebook user posted the viral image with the caption: लालकिला और चारमीनार तो नहीं बिके, लेकिन NDTV जरूर बिक गया (English Translation: Red Fort and Charminar did not sell, but NDTV did sell)
You can find the post here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the viral image and found the claim to be false.
To check the tweet’s authenticity, we started our investigation by visiting the official Twitter handle of Ravish Kumar. Looking closely at the viral image we noticed that the date on the tweet is August 23, 2022. Scanning Kumar’s profile we could not find any tweet between July 14, 2022, and August 24, 2022.
Moving on, we looked up the username of the profile mentioned in the viral image. It turns out that the account mentioned in the image is different to the one that belongs to Ravish Kumar. The account @ravishrndtv through which the tweet was done has been suspended. At the same time, Kumar’s official account (@ravishndtv) is active even now.
The spelling in the usernames of both the accounts is different too, while Kumar’s official account is @ravishndtv in all lowercase letters, the suspended account is @Ravishrndtv, with an uppercase R and an additional ‘r’ before ndtv.
Finally, we noticed the text ‘Twitter for Dalals’ written at the end, after the date. Twitter enabled the functionality that allows users to identify the device from which the tweet is being done. Usually, it comes with a label at the end of the tweet. While we noticed that all the tweets posted by Kumar contain a ‘Twitter for iPhone’ label, we could not identify ‘Twitter for Dalals’ anywhere on his feed or on the platform.
Therefore, based on our investigation we can conclusively say that the viral screenshot of Ravish Kumar’s purported claiming that NDTV has now become Narendra Damodardas TV, is false.
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