When full-lies about Chetan Bhagat revealed the media race for clickbait

Be it the plagiarism row, inclusion in Delhi University’s syllabus or one of his posts on social media, author Chetan Bhagat never ceases to make news. Recently, on April 26, Bhagat created a storm on Facebook with a post called, “Let her take her time”. This post, had gems such as – “When she takes time to serve you breakfast, let her. She has kept aside the burnt toast for herself and is taking the time to serve her family the nicest ones she could manage”. Understandably the tone ruffled people’s feathers and was called “offensive” and even “misogynistic”. The post spoke of how men should allow women to dress up, choose a dish from the menu, watch TV mindlessly, because women make sacrifices to ensure that men are at comfort.

The post soon went viral on social media, with scores of men and women trashing the author for his sexist views. It wasn’t just social media peeps, but many news organisations such as InUth, Youth Ki Awaaz and Women’s Web followed suit, but they all seemed to have noticed the post almost a week after it was uploaded. Given that Bhagat has courted controversy in the past for his attempts to “get into a woman’s head” in his book, One Indian Girl, not many people gave him the benefit of doubt of whether or not he’d written the post. What many, including the aforementioned news websites ignored is the fact that the post was from a fake account. Any known personality is bound to have several fake accounts in their name. But the one sign that these are fake accounts is that they do not have the blue tick which verified accounts do.

After the take-downs on his post started making the rounds on social media, Bhagat decided that he gets enough deserved hate, so should not take the unwarranted hate coming his way, lying down. He tweeted to each of the websites and wrote:

Women’s Web – two days after the original story was published – took down the post which was contributed by a blogger Sangitha Krishnamurthi. They issued a clarification stating, “we are therefore removing the contents of our article from this page, and apologise for any inconvenience inadvertently caused”.

Indian Express’ youth magazine, InUth also issued a statement late at night on May 3, after pulling down the original article – which was published on the same day – from their website. “Sadly, many people, including our team at InUth, mistook the Facebook handle for the official Chetan Bhagat”, read their statement. The website apologised to Bhagat and its readers for “not doing due diligence in verifying the authenticity of the post” and promised to be “more mindful” in future.

The websites have since deleted the articles even from their cache. Though the “due diligence” of the above mentioned websites in carrying an apology and clarification can be appreciated, Youth Ki Awaaz that stands to be the “mouthpiece for the youth” didn’t deem it important to tell its readers that the facts in the piece they published were unverified. Instead of issuing an apology or a clarification, the website simply pulled down the article and apologised on twitter.

A point which Bhagat pointed out in subsequent tweets.

The article, titled “An Open Letter To Chetan Bhagat From One Indian Girl”, which can be still be accessed through cache is written by a Delhi University alumni who is now studying at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Although the views expressed in the article about Bhagat are indeed the personal views of the author, what she failed to do was carry out a very basic fact-check. The author gets into Bhagat’s head, who in retrospective thinks “Such fools! They think I write for women. Don’t you see my stories are actually for and about men even when I have female characters. Do they really think I am into feminism? I am on your side, yaar! (Or am I?) Huehuehue!,” reads the article. The post then goes on to say that Bhagat is famous for writing what “clicks”. “‘Letting’ women (because in the end the man decides, you know this!) iron clothes and then sip lukewarm tea clicks. Showing women only as love interests clicks. Showing a man writing for a woman clicks. Classist college stories click. Misogyny clicks.”

Ironically, the author and the website in question also seem to have got caught up in writing and publishing what “clicks”, without verifying facts.

It’s bad enough that there’s enough fake news floating about on social media. But one would hope that actual journalists and actual media outlets would not get carried away by the need to get instant clicks. After all, all it requires is some basic fact-checking before hitting Publish. Also, while mistakes happen, keeping in mind that this is the era of post-truth and fake news, Bhagat isn’t actually asking for too much when pointing out that he deserves an apology.

As the renowned journalist from Zee News, Sudhir Chaudhary said on his show yesterday, it is the media that can either choose to keep society away or closer to the truth. Also, it always helps while taking down someone, to be able to not have egg on your face in the process. Not only does it ruin the take-down, but also helps level out the high ground journalism hopes to take.

The author can be contacted on Twitter @shrutimenon10.