Election reporting, especially by news channels, is often a sweet little hoax. It adds little to what we already know, make sly insinuations that it has little proof of, derives meanings that were never meant to be.

Earlier this month, on October 3, Lalu Prasad Yadav found himself in a controversy for his remarks that Hindus too eat beef. Lalu, who is one of the more politically incorrect politicians in the country, said to Asian News International on the Dadri incident:

“Hindu mein nahi khaata hai kya beef? Jo baahar jaata hai beef khaata hai ki nahi? Hindustan mein bhi toh beef khaa raha hai. Jo maans khaata hai usko gai ya bakra se kya fark hai? Yeh toh [BJP-RSS] communalise kar raha hai.” A loose translation is: “Don’t a section of the Hindus eat beef? Don’t those who go abroad eat beef? Indians living in the country eat too. For those who eat meat it matters little whether they eat beef or mutton. The BJP-RSS people are communalising this issue.”

Lalu also talked gibberish: that no civilised person eats maans, meat, only poor, who can’t afford other things, do; that one shouldn’t eat meat because it causes diseases; and other such home-made medical advice.

Predictably, when the video became popular, most headlines said something like “Lalu says Hindus eat beef.” Lalu’s decades-old foe Sushil Modi, who might well become Bihar’s next chief minister, said that if the NDA gets a majority in the assembly elections, it will pass legislation banning cow slaughter: “Now voters need to decide whether they want a government that bans the cow slaughter, or the one that approves beef-eating.” (Significantly, a spokesperson from BJP’s ally RLSP said Sushil Modi’s remark was improper, that he should discuss with the allies before making such statements.) Perhaps neither knew that there already exists such a law in Bihar, and since 1955.

To be sure Lalu may have exaggerated a few things: a large percentage of Hindus in India who eat meat, for example, don’t eat beef out of veneration for cows -which can be safely assumed, though we’ve no data to corroborate. When Lalu realised the extent of possible damage of his statements, he made clarifications in the media; to be fair they were consistent with what he had earlier said. He repeated that many Indians who go abroad eat beef; he quoted the example of Justice Markandey Katju and the BJP leader from Arunachal Pradesh, Kiren Rijiju, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, saying Indians living in India eat beef too. Lalu claimed, not entirely without reason, that his cow-protection credentials are any day better than those of BJP leaders who had criticised him for his remarks. He also said it was a shaitaan, someone crooked, who had been deliberately misquoting him.

Everyone interpreted the shaitaan bit the way they wanted to. ABP News decided that “Lalu Yadav abuses media” in his clarification. In the video that accompanies the channel’s claim, though, nowhere does Lalu abuse media; he simply attacks traditional foes Amit Shah & Co.

Prime minister Modi too had some fun at Lalu’s expense: on October 8, the first day of his 40-rally campaign in Bihar, he made a dramatic mention of Lalu’s beef remarks saying, wrongly, that Lalu had said that shaitaan – Modi suggested it to mean a devil – had got into him.

With so much drama around, it’s safe to assume that Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, a senior leader from Lalu’s party Rashtriya Janata Dal (and who was standing behind the camera when the party boss was issuing one of his many clarifications), would be circumspect of a possible question on the matter.

He was: on Saturday, October 9, he was talking to the local channels when one of the reporters asked him about the implications of Lalu’s beef remarks. Even before the reporter could finish, Singh said, “Yeh sab bayaan-wayyan ka koi matlab hai? Woh academic bahas hai, ved-puraan mein kya sab likha hai, rishi-maharshi bhi khaate the pehle jamaane mein. Lekin chunaav ke samay academic bahas ki jaroorat nahi hai.” Singh went on to say that there are more pressing development issues to be discussed than the beef debate.

But once again, it led to breaking news which said “Singh has courted controversy by saying that in ancient times sages too ate beef”. Sample this Times Now report:

Anyone who understands Hindi and watches this video would know that media forced a controversy on Singh.

One can’t blame Sushil Modi for his tirade on Lalu: his is at present a most tragic case. An efficient deputy of Nitish Kumar in the NDA government of 2005-13, Sushil Modi was said to belong to the BJP camp that favoured Lal Krishna Advani over Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate in 2014. Generally known to be a liberal, Sushil Modi might say a thing or two to please the new bosses from Gujarat, with whom he has less than great terms.

But one wonders what pleasure media gets out of such casual sensationalism. News media is a great deal responsible for transporting the cow slaughter debate in Bihar’s electoral discourse. This is the last thing one of India’s poorest states should be discussing to choose its next government. By polarising the public opinion, news is doing the opposite of its function: to inform and educate.