On March 8, 2014, the official Twitter account of NDTV tweeted a comment which they attributed to Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushma Swaraj. The tweet suggested a serious rift between the leaders of the BJP and seemed to support rumours which have been afloat for a long time. Swaraj’s comment – as tweeted by NDTV – cemented what many have suspected recently about the conflict within the BJP.  Potential voters may have wondered how they would trust a party who could not get their own house in order. But wait, minutes later, it turned out that Swaraj had said nothing of the kind, and NDTV was quick to apologise for the tweet and delete it.

Now most fair-minded people understand that running a large news organisation isn’t easy and often mistakes such as these can occur. Late at night on March 25, CNN IBN’s Twitter account tweeted one word – “Wow”. That was harmless. Here the incident is slightly more grave, going by the fact that a quote has been attributed to someone. It is likely that the individual managing the Twitter feed misread or misheard or misunderstood the remark and tweeted it. They should have apologised to Swaraj and the BJP directly as well, but that didn’t happen. The BJP  was perfectly within its rights to issue a boycott from all debates on the channel.

Then, on April 3, 2014, almost a month after the erroneous tweet appeared,  another tweet attributed to the BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi made an appearance. While the previous tweet was serious with its implication of a rift, this one seemed to suggest that Modi directly said that he is corrupt himself and permitted others around him to be the same, thus encouraging an unhealthy atmosphere. Potential voters may have wondered how they could trust a man who proudly proclaimed to be corrupt and even encouraged others to be.

It soon turned out that Modi had said nothing of the sort. NDTV  was again quick to apologise and delete the tweet. Like before, they didn’t apologise to Modi or BJP, but merely to their followers.

As stated earlier, running a massive news organisation is tough and mistakes will happen but this was the second error. If you look closer, there is a lot in common between the two tweets. Both were attributed to BJP leaders, both tweets made comments that put the BJP and the leaders in question in a bad light. Most importantly, both tweets were made at a time when elections are knocking on our door. It would be interesting to see what action the Election Commission takes.

There are varieties of misrepresentation. There is the kind where the mistake is genuine and  occurred when the person has said one thing and perhaps due to lack of understanding or listening, it has been misinterpreted. Then, there is the kind where a statement is taken out of context and presented as a headline for an article which is clearly mischievous. Further, there is the kind that is most dangerous of all, when somebody with an active imagination and an agenda invents something out of thin air to cause harm to an individual or an organisation.

People from NDTV will tell you that this is just a trivial, minuscule tweet and one among a million tweets hardly matters. They will argue that they issued an apology in both cases and we should move on. But consider the following situation. Imagine a voter who hasn’t quite made up his or her mind read the  tweet attributed to Modi, assumed it to be true and then bases his voting decision on what he has read. Unlikely perhaps, but definitely possible. Or, think of a local newspaper with limited resources who looks to tweets to fill its space. They see this tweet from the official account of a major news network , they see the tweet is quite shocking in nature and decide to use it. The newspaper reaches every house of that small town. The next day they clarify that the tweet was based on a falsehood. But the damage  has been done. The reader of the newspaper or the tweet may have made his decision not to vote for Modi and what’s worse, he or she may share it with others whose decisions may also be influenced. This can be crucial in places where easy information is not always available.

At the risk of being audacious, I will try and ventriloquise Oscar Wilde’s reaction that would probably have been like this – “To tweet erroneously once may be regarded as a misfortune; to tweet erroneously twice seems careless”. If this was mere carelessness by NDTV, it would be in NDTV’s interest to share with the public how they dealt with both situations and what measures were implemented to make sure that incidents such as these never ever occur again. The fallout of social media is that once you put something out there on Twitter or facebook, it is near impossible to obliterate it completely. Which is why, news organisations which disseminate information need to be even more careful than casual users of social media. In the current state of affairs where there is much discussion on whether media houses are batting for one political party or another,  even careless tweets such as these will be viewed with a magnifying glass.