A British company, Cambridge Analytica, accused of harvesting data of 50 million Facebook users during US President Donald Trump’s election campaign, has been making international headlines for sometime now. Recently, allegations regarding the role of the parent company’s Indian subsidiary, Ovleno Business Intelligence (OBI), in Indian election campaigns have come to light.

Both leading national parties, the governing Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress, have got engaged in a “war of words” on the matter, with TV channels providing wall-to-wall coverage.

During a press conference held earlier yesterday, Union minister and BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad raised questions about Cambridge Analytica’s association with Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and the party’s social media management. While Prasad has asked the Congress to explain its association with the data analysis firm, he also warned against any “covert or overt attempt to misuse social media including Facebook to influence India’s electoral process”.

Prasad said: “Misusing social media to influence elections through undesirable means will neither be tolerated nor permitted.” He added: “This is not just a question of Congress party’s association with a rogue data analysis firm but a question of free and fair elections in India and the democratic values of our country.”

A press conference was hosted by the Congress as well, where spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said: “BJP’s factory of fake news has produced one more fake product today. It appears that fake press conferences, agenda, fake spins and fake statements have become the everyday character of the BJP and its lawless minister, the law minister Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad.”

Meanwhile, Congress social media in-charge Divya Spandana stated that reports about Congress’ engagement with Cambridge Analytica were absolutely false.

However, both the Congress and BJP, along with Janata Dal (United), are listed as clients on OBI’s website. Among its services, OBI provides “end-to-end solution to manage complete election campaign”, according to its official website. Services also include providing “a sense of engagement with voter”, “PR opportunity to display this ‘voter connect’ and social media strategy which determines the best social voice”.

With both national parties in the soup, it wasn’t unexpected to see TV news providing wall-to-wall coverage to the issue. Some of the hashtags and phrases that were used were #VoteFixingScam, #CongDataBreachCharge, #CongDataFraud and #BJPCongFBwar.

In its report on “FB DATA LEAK: BJP, CONG DOUBLESPEAK”, NDTV  reported about OBI’s client list, including the BJP, Congress and JDU. The channel also pointed out that this is contrary to the claims of the BJP and the Congress — both have denied involvement with Cambridge Analytica.

To corroborate this, NDTV broadcast screenshots of OBI’s India director Himanshu Sharma’s LinkedIn page, which were earlier tweeted out by the channel’s Sreenivasan Jain.

The report pointed out that, as director, Sharma claimed to have “successfully managed four election campaigns” for the BJP in “Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Delhi”,  and claimed success for the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

Sharma’s profile, however, no longer makes any reference to elections of the BJP.

And this has also caught the attention of social media users.

In addition, NDTV pointed out that OBI’s website stated the firm’s role in the 2010 Bihar Assembly elections. However, while the website did not state the name of the party, it said the result was a landslide victory. These elections had seen a coalition of the BJP and JDU coming to power.

This is, however, no longer visible. Because, in addition to cleaning of Sharma’s profile, OBI’s website was suspended as well.

While all this was happening, Times Now’s focus was on “BIG BJP-CONG WAR OF WORDS”. While its anchor Anand Narasimhan was hosting the broadcast on #VoterFixingScandal, some of the phrases on the screen were reflective of their coverage, such as “FACE-OFF OVER DATA FRAUD ROW”, “PARTY LEADERS SPAR ON TIMES NOW” and “BIHAR NETA’S SON IS ‘KINGPIN’”.

Some of the most pressing questions that Narasimhan asked included queries to Congress’ Divya Spandana to “expand” on the BJP, Congress and JDU being listed on OBI’s website and her thoughts on OBI’s “belief” that they are into “political campaign management and they widely use social media”.

Fortunately, that was not all the coverage Times Now had to offer. In something of a scoop, the channel sent its reporter to OBI’s registered address in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. And in due course, it found that there were no corporate offices at the registered address.

Meanwhile, Republic TV was also verifying the registered offices. Like Times Now, Republic TV found no corporate offices but a medical shop instead. Reporting from the site, the channel’s correspondent also spoke about the connection between OBI and the JDU, and OBI and the Congress.

Amrish Tyagi, OBI’s Managing Director, is the son of Rajya Sabha MP and JDU member KC Tyagi, the reporter explained. Additionally, he also reported about an alleged meeting between Alexander Nix, now-suspended CEO of Cambridge Analytica, and Rahul Gandhi. Even as the links were being “exposed”, Republic TV put such questions on its screen: “Will Rahul Apologise for Lying?” and “Can Rahul Gandhi deny direct link?”

Over at India Today, Associate Editor Poulomi Saha was reporting on the comments made by Congress’ Spandana and IT minister Prasad, along with international developments in the case. India Today’s deputy editor Ankit Tyagi also reported on OBI’s website getting suspended. Earlier, India Today’s Avantika Singh had talked about the press conferences held by both the BJP and Congress.

By this time, footage of American broadcaster CNN was being played on CNN-News18 — something that was exclusive to the channel’s coverage. Apart from the coverage of the press conference, News18’s coverage included a face-off between the IT cell heads of both parties.

By 8 pm the story was fodder for anchors on prime-time debates.

CNN-News18’s Zakka Jacob, on his show Face Off, was debating: “Are political parties in India also guilty of manipulating elections through social media?” Not only the big question, News18’s hashtag — #BJPCongFBwar — was party-neutral too. This was only an indication of the tone of the debate where representatives of both the BJP and the Congress were given equal opportunity to speak.

On NDTV, Nidhi Razdan continued on the lines of the channel’s earlier reportage on the issue, while addressing the larger debate about data privacy being taken for granted in India.

On Times Now, Rahul Shivshankar was discussing “data raider” is Rahul’s top choice. Also on the screen was “Is BJP’s invincibility crumbling?” In contradiction to its earlier reportage, where it had maintained a balance between allegations made by the BJP and the Congress, Times Now’s prime-time saw the channel looking into “Mega Congress ‘data theft’ self goal” and its “scruples” — indicating a lean away from party-neutral coverage.

With anchor Gaurav Sawant hosting a show on “Data ‘Theft’ War”, the hashtag on India Today had changed from #CongDataFraud to #FacebookDataLeaks. While the show was, primarily, a duel between Congress’ Charan Singh Chapra and BJP’s Sudesh Verma, it was deputy editor Tyagi’s role that was commendable.

Coming in at different occasions during the show, Tyagi, who was playing the role of a real-time fact-checker, called out the false/misinterpreted arguments being presented by the spokies of both parties. Something that other channels can also think about doing. This was continued on Rajdeep Sardesai’s show, who concluded with his take on the entire scandal.

RepublicTV was debating #ForeignHandExposed with editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami, where IT minister Prasad had been called upon to be part of the show. This could have been an opportunity for really holding power to account, but the debate ran along the theme of “India’s biggest data scandal exposed and Congress party finds itself right in the middle of it”. And the minister who had come on board as the spokesperson for the BJP remained limited to giving proof about Congress’ guilt — one of which was a 2017 article in Business Standard, among other newspapers, indicating that the Congress was in talks with the firm in question.

The problem with this particular debate was the missing balance in the pointed questions being posed. While questions such as “did you use stolen data” during elections were posed to those not in power, the questions for Prasad were read off a script or were along the lines of “How is he (Amrish Tyagi) sitting pretty over there and not being arrested?”

Goswami’s soft line of questioning to the BJP only had competition at Times Now, where Navika Kumar was interviewing BJP president Amit Shah.