Hindustan Times pulls down its Hate Tracker

The much-acclaimed and trolled Hindustan Times hate tracker, which is said to have been one of the main reasons for its erstwhile editor-in-chief Bobby Ghosh’s exit, has been pulled down.

When Newslaundry tried to access the cache, the last available cached version is from October 23.

Though the hate tracker has been taken down, a video on the hate tracker still exits on HT’s youtube channel. Moreover, a story by Niha Masih announcing the launch of the hate tracker still exists on the internet, albeit, without the actual link to the hate tracker.

On July 28, HT launched the hate tracker — a crowdsourced national database on crimes in the name of religion, caste and race since September 2015 — but after Ghosh’s exit, HT seems to have been distancing itself from the database. 

On September 13, two days after Ghosh’s resignation was announced, the HT content engagement editor, Geetika Rustagi, wrote to editorial heads in Delhi and Mumbai. “Rajesh’s instruction: Kindly don’t RT any hate tracker related tweets till further notice,” she wrote in the mail.

Newslaundry reached out to the new editor-in-chief Sukumar Ranganathan, this piece will be updated if and when he chooses to respond. 

Though HT is yet to officially confirm the pull down and the reason for it, it has already got journalists talking about media’s freedom.