Postcard News is in a controversy again. The rightwing portal, set up around a year ago by Vivek Shetty regularly features “news” that is in line with the nationalist agenda. With eye-catching headlines and provocatively worded content, Postcard News makes no attempt to hide its obvious attempt to further the pro-government, pro-Hindutva propaganda. Its articles are widely shared among like-minded people though, of late, a steady discontent is building up.
A few days ago, a Twitter user, @rishiuvaach tweeted that another user, Saurabh Jha (@saurabhjha12), is getting abusive and threatening calls from owner of the postcard news portal. “If something wrong happens with @saurabhjha12 or me, world should know the culprit”, he tweeted.
The altercation apparently started when Postcard News was accused of carrying advertisements from porn sites. @rishiuvaach posted a video proof of the advertisements carried by Postcard News to boost its revenues.
This accusation was denied by Postcard News and it is not clear how it escalated into the alleged threats. When asked “but why would Postcard be against you, they are not secular media”, @rishiuvaach responded, “Our one mistake.. put one post showing that portal is using adult ads from MGID ads panel for making money”.
As the news of threats spread, there was a sharp reaction among the right-wingers with another Twitter user @muglikar_ tweeting that he will unfollow and block anyone who shares links of Postcard News.
Another tweet aptly summed up Postcard news and its style of operation.
The drama continued to unfold with Vivek Shetty writing an emotional facebook post. He accused fellow right-wingers of attacking him and his work, questioning his integrity and lack of knowledge. “It is time to say goodbye to facebook”, he said.
He was however back after one day, “thanks to all the love, unflinching support and trust” he received from his followers.
Postcard News is not new to controversy. In December 2016, postcard news was accused of carrying articles copied from another rightwing platform, OpIndia. In a series of tweets, @bwoyblunder from OpIndia accused postcard news of plagiarising their content. In the first case,they reposted an OpIndia article without permission. When confronted, they removed it. A few days later, they did it again. ”Next time post a link of @OpIndia_com itself, instead of stealing our content without permission & without even a link back”, @bwoyblunder rebuked them. Despite this, there was soon a third instance of plagiarism. The two right wing sites were at loggerheads. One may not agree with OpIndia articles but they you usually seem to be original work. The concept of crediting other other’s work was something difficult for Postcard News to understand as they continued to argue that they were only spreading the good word.
Recently, Ankit Jain (@indiantweeter), in a set of tweets has called upon fellow right-wingers to raise a voice against Postcard News for its threats and blatant plagiarism. “This is the time to clean up the system”, he said.
There is indeed a lot cleaning up required in the rightwing ecosystem. We wish them luck!
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