Full disclosure: Akshay Marathe is National Joint Secretary of the Aam Aadmi Party. He was in-charge of Digital Media communications for the party’s Goa election campaign. He currently works with the Delhi Government on education policy.

“No admission! Why? Because Your 3 Year Old Is a Lashkar Operative” read the headline of a DNA story filed by journalist Fareeha Ifthikar yesterday. The story was based on a School Branch circular first issued by the Directorate of Education, Government of Delhi a few years ago.

The circular, titled “Model Code of Conduct for Students” directs schools to ensure children are not allowed to bring their mobile phones, motorcycles or Mopeds to school premises. Attached to the circular was a list of activities forbidden for children under the Code of Conduct. The list included “absence from school” and “violence in any form” among several other activities that children cannot engage in as students of Delhi Government schools. The specific item on the list that drew DNA’s attention, however, was “Association with banned organisations”.

The reporter was in possession of this circular which was re-issued by the School Branch in November last year, following the shocking murder of a school teacher by two students in a Nangloi school. The report anonymously quotes a Delhi Government official, who clarifies that the circular was originally issued in 2014, and that the ‘banned organisations’ referred to local gangs that indulge in violence. More importantly, the circular does not mention at any point that the Code of Conduct was also to be considered as the criteria for admission to schools. The headline, however misleadingly claims admission would be denied on the basis of the circular and therefore in extension goes on to sensationally claim that Delhi schools would deny admission to children associated to Lashkar-e-taiba (LeT), a Pakistani terror group.

One could attribute the glaring recklessness of DNA to a click-bait practice that news portals routinely employ to add shock value to innocuous news items so as to boost traffic. But their disregard for basic fact checking or editorial oversight on what their website publishes is unfortunate.

In what was more surprising, Press Trust of India (PTI) picked up the DNA story verbatim and sent out a wire to media outlets titled ‘DL-SCHOOLS-TERROR’, and soon the dangerously inaccurate and misleading story was now being run by multiple institutions. PTI soon issued a fresh wire that corrected the story to some extent. It carried a quote from Atishi Marlena, the Advisor to Delhi’s Education Minister Manish Sisodia, who said, “The reference (in the circular) to banned outfits should not be seen as that to terror outfits. It refers to local groups which have caused incidents of indiscipline and violence in the past in certain schools.”

This morning multiple newspapers (at least four – Dainik Bhaskar, the Financial Express, The Tribune, and The Hindu) have carried the PTI story titled “No seat in schools for those linked with banned outfits”.

Let’s go over the chronology of this entire incident:

DNA reporter Ifthikar does a story screaming that three-year-old Lashkar operatives will not be granted admission to Delhi schools. A Delhi Government official went on record to clarify that the old circular was re-issued in November, 2016, after a gruesome murder of a school teacher, laying down a Model Code of Conduct. Pertinently, the re-issue occurred in November last year and makes no mention of eligibility for admissions. The report surreptitiously links it with the admission process with absolutely no basis in fact. It goes on to quote a Principal of a private school, who falsely claims that she had never before seen such an obnoxious circular. How could that be, if this circular was originally issued in 2014? The same report also quotes Ashok Agarwal, a lawyer and self-described ‘social jurist’. Agarwal had a falling out with the ruling Aam Aadmi Party in 2014 and has been at loggerheads with the Delhi Government ever since. The report uses his quote to justify another sensational claim made by the reporter about the circular, “Civil rights groups are up in arms”. No such group was quoted or even mentioned.

And PTI, without verifying the facts in the original story, picks it up and issues a wire. Subsequently, PTI also wires a correction in the form of a reaction from Marlena.

And finally major newspapers publish the first wire sent out by PTI, without using the correction issued by the agency.

The entire industry failed at every single step. DNA’s editors clearly did not bother to do what editors are supposed to do. Their webdesk most irresponsibly made a fairly standard story unnecessarily sensational. PTI, equally, did not verify the story before running it. Trusting the ethics and morals of an agency as old and reputed as PTI, other newspapers also published the same mangled fact.

This episode does not surprise nor shock, because the new media is a beast that has given up on several of journalism’s core values. Such incidents are routinely witnessed in media circles and have become the new normal. However, they must be reported on and talked about in the hope that reporters and organisations are reminded that they have a certain responsibility to the public and that no pressures can justify such a hit job especially one that has to do with something as non-political as school admissions.