On January 7 this year, Sandeep Bamzai became the Editor-in-Chief and CEO at the three-decade-old Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). Bamzai’s arrival was not the usual change of guard at a media outlet. It came after several bouts of alleged proprietorial and political pressure coupled with an embarrassing editorial fiasco in the months prior to his entry.

Between January and March 2019, about a dozen people left IANS. This includes CEO Mahesh Daga, Director and Editor Shibi Alex Chandy, Managing Editor Hardev Sanotra, Executive Editor VS Chandrashekhar and 10 reporters. Their departures came through resignations, but there is more to the story than meets the proverbial eye.

In a piece for The Wire in March 2019, Hardev Sanotra, who resigned in January this year, claimed that the agency had started facing pressure from the governing Bharatiya Janata Party to modify or drop stories since the past one year. In addition, there were conveyed messages from the agency’s “owners” in 2018 that “direct criticism of the prime minister should be avoided”.

By owners, Sanotra meant the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG)—the group which owns majority stake in IANS since 2007. In late 2017, the Congress party started making allegations of partiality on the part of the government to hand an “inflated” $8.7 billion jet deal to a rookie Reliance Defence Limited. Junior Ambani has been in a soup since.

Sanotra alleged that the interventions by the “owners” at IANS became more frequent in 2018 when the Rafale deal started facing greater scrutiny in the mainstream media. This was also when the wire agency started receiving “unsourced” and “dubious” stories supporting the deal from the “owners”. 

Former IANS employees told Newslaundry that the ADAG’s involvement in the agency’s editorial tasks had been muted since 2007 (when the group bought equity in IANS), but had picked up in 2016 and peaked in 2018. They claim that the politics surrounding the Rafale deal was the primary reason behind Bamzai’s eventual takeover in the first month of 2019. However, there was one important aside to this—the infamous “bakhchod” episode.

Bakhchod boo boo

In September 2018, IANS had uploaded a story on the Union Cabinet’s decision to permit private players to procure crop produce at remunerative prices. All seemed ordinary, except the Prime Minister’s middle name. Instead of “Damodardas”, it read “Bakhchod”.

All hell broke loose. Twitter users switched to shock mode and decried the scandal.

IANS took down the article and replaced it with a corrected copy within minutes. A statement of apology said the news agency deeply regretted “the wholly inadvertent incursion of an unparliamentary reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi”. It added: “The reporter concerned has been suspended with immediate effect pending an urgent ongoing investigation. A show-cause notice has also been issued to the concerned editor.”

Newslaundry has learnt that this “inadvertent insertion” was somewhat advertent. The word was inserted in the copy during regular office banter between some reporters and editors at the agency. Coarse adjectives were added to the names of politicians to draw chuckles during these banters. However, on this occasion, a major news story paused the jest and the distraction was such that the B-word inserted between Modi’s name was not removed. It then seeped through editorial filters and made its way to the website. Sanotra called the incident “egregious” and a “blunder”.

However, Sanotra’s article did not dwell upon a more worrying trend at IANS: that of reporters being allegedly coerced to leave the agency since Bamzai’s arrival.

Starting February, a number of reporters at IANS have been either asked to quit or have been demoted from their beats. Since the new management is shy of firing them, these reporters claim that they face constant pressure from their editors to put in their papers at the earliest. And most of them did—10 reporters have left the agency since Bamzai’s arrival.  

Mr Cleaner

Before he assumed the position of CEO and Editor-in-Chief at IANS, Bamzai had two stints at the Mail Today and the Financial Chronicle respectively. In his 37 years in journalism, Bamzai has worked at publications like The Indian Express, Hindustan Times, The Times of India, Dalal Street Journal and The Illustrated Weekly, among others.

Out of these, Bamzai’s tenure at Mail Today as Editor stands most memorable. In 2013, the newspaper published an op-ed by lawyer Shanti Bhushan which slammed Arvind Kejriwal for splitting Team Anna. The article had shock value given Bhushan was a founder-member of the Aam Aadmi Party. But it was forged. Bhushan, who claimed to have not written a word of it, blasted Mail Today for the editorial oversight: “The newspaper in question did not check with me to verify whether the article was actually written or sent by me, before publishing the article with my name and photograph … Clearly a conspiracy involving some big political persons and the newspaper.”

Bamzai had taken to Twitter and apologised to the lawyer, adding that he had filed an FIR against the person who made mischief.

In 2015, Bamzai’s name popped up in the Essar leaks, where internal communication among Essar employees were made public by a whistleblower. Among other things, these leaks revealed that the corporation had tried to push its business interests by cultivating a quid pro quo relationship with journalists. The company’s travel requisition forms showed that Bamzai had travelled in a cab at Essar’s expense for 10 days in November 2012.

A few hours after these revelations, Bamzai stepped down as Editor at Mail Today. “Propriety demands that I quit and I have done so,” he then told Newslaundry. Bamzai admitted to The Indian Express that the favour was a “stupid mistake”: “I needn’t have done that … but the fact is I did ask for the cab and I decided to pay for that mistake by resigning today … but the other allegation in the PIL that I did a hit job at their (Essar Group) behest is entirely incorrect and false.”

Controversies aside, Bamzai has earned the reputation of being Mr Cleaner over the years. This distinction comes from his purported tendency to make the organisations he heads meaner, leaner and hence cleaner. This is also Bamzai’s own rationale to explain the rumblings of discontent at IANS in the past two months.

The Bamzai scheme of things

Sandeep Bamzai views his incipient tenure at IANS as the beginning of a regeneration of a news agency that had fallen on bad times. For him, the ancien regime under Managing Editor Hardev Sanotra was reckless, relaxed and responsible for doing damage to IANS’s reputation.

For the new regime, speed and originality of content is of the essence. A glance at the IANS website reveals new sections of news content that were absent before: a space devoted to “IANS Exclusive”, a dedicated masthead for IPL scores, a space reserved for infographics—all this garnished with a more liberal use of images.

There has been a conspicuous dip in “IANS Specials”—a feature considered the USP of the agency. However, source-based news items remain.

In late January this year, an IANS piece claimed that “top government sources” confirmed that ED and CBI officials would be flying to West Indies in a Boeing to bring back diamantaire-on-the-run Mehul Choksi and might even pick up Nirav Modi from Europe on the way. Nothing of this sort ever happened.

In February, there was an entirely source-based three-part series that chided Dassault’s competitor Lockheed Martin for the deal’s problems.

The series made assertions and implications that were low on evidence and high on innuendos. For instance, it said that Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s attacks on the Rafale deal “started after his visit to the US in August 2017 when he met several defence lobbyists, CEOs of US defence companies and Pentagon officials”. This was a nudge-nudge-wink-wink strategy meant to impute that Gandhi’s political invectives against the deal were motivated by his interactions with Dassault’s American competitors.

The article did not stop there. It went on to allege that the Indian government had intelligence that point toward “eye-opening linkages” between Rafale critics Prashant Bhushan, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and arms dealers and defence manufacturers. Arun Shourie’s family, it claimed, has “deep connections … with aerospace companies, arms dealers and defence lobbies”.

“We were strictly asked not to do source-based stories before Bamzai. Now it’s almost like you’re allowed to write just about anything,” an IANS employee who recently quit told this reporter. Others contest this view. 

When it comes to editorial freedom, the state of affairs is the opposite. Former staff members told Newslaundry that although the overall output was lesser under Sanotra, reporters enjoyed more space to pursue what they wanted. Things have been different under the new management. Reporters are now handed many stories by the editorial department, and this often happens over email. Ground reporting too has taken a hit.

This reporter talked to about a dozen people who’ve been associated with IANS—including those who’ve quit recently and others who still work at the agency. The collective assertion is that there is a wave of source-based, pro-establishment output under Bamzai. Most believe that it is a corrective for the anti-establishment outlook prevalent during the last leg of Sanotra’s tenure. In other words, it’s damage control—even damage repair.

Sanotra thinks that the stories that come from Ambani’s quarters, which the earlier management resisted, or at least “sanitised”, freely make their way to the wire now. “Bamzai has been brought in by the Ambanis to do their bidding,” Sanotra told this reporter. “It’s a tragedy what is happening at IANS.”

If Bamzai has been brought to perform this function, then it is understandable why former and current staff members blame him for the agency’s “tabloidisation”. They describe the stories he delegates as “non-existing”, “sensational”, “illusory” and “false”. “They [the new management] don’t know how a wire agency functions. An agency has a social duty. What they’re now running is a tabloid. It’s a hatchet job,” a former senior IANS employee told Newslaundry.

Routine stories have picked up pace under Bamzai—he says IANS puts out around 400 stories a day since he took over. It’s something a wire agency must do, he believes, describing the transformation as “spring cleaning”. “We’re a news wire,” he told me. “We’ve to be up and running as soon as possible. That’s the only way you get traction among subscribers.”

Omission and coercion

“What is your primary reason for leaving?”

“I did not leave on my volition but was pressurised by the management to resign.”

“Did anything trigger your decision to leave?”

“The decision to leave was imposed upon me by the management and I was not given any reason for it.”

“What was most satisfying about your job?”

“Under the new management there was nothing satisfying about my job.”

“Did anyone in this company discriminate against you, harass you or cause hostile working conditions?”

“Prashant Sood continuously harassed me to resign and despite repeated queries he refused to give any reasons for that.”

These are extracts from an IANS exit interview accessed by Newslaundry.

Prashant Sood is the Chief of Bureau for reporting at IANS. Incumbent and former employees at the organisation whom I spoke to described Sood as a “weak” and “yielding” character who acts on the new management’s instructions. “It’s like he’s been told that if he doesn’t deliver what has been asked of him, he’ll be fired,” one staff member told me.

So what is Sood, who has been at IANS for nine years,  expected to do under the new regime? According to his colleagues, he has the job of coercing perceived troublemakers to put in their papers. “It became such a nag after a point,” an IANS employee who quit in March told Newslaundry. “There were days when I would return from assignments and Sood would quip, ‘Oh you’re back? The story is done? Now why don’t you resign in the evening?'”

Newslaundry was also told that Sood told reporters that if they did not resign, he’ll have no option but to submit a bad performance review and have them terminated. Sood would often admit to reporters that he was delegated the dirty task of culling them. When anxious reporters asked him to provide a reason for being dropped so unceremoniously, he simply stated: “They don’t want you here.” You are one of the best reporters, he would tell them, and so I don’t want to file a bad assessment and have you fired. Wouldn’t it be better if you resign yourself and continue your career in journalism, he would ask. A former staff member, who was at the receiving end of this duress, lamented: “They fire you and they don’t tell you why. It’s like you’re being sacrificed but you’re not allowed to scream.”

On the editorial side of things, Sood categorically asked reporters to not name Anil Ambani in their Rafale stories—especially while reporting Rahul Gandhi’s accusations on the industrialist. He had multiple ideas about how to avoid naming him but when puzzled reporters demanded a reason, Sood stated blankly that they were working in Ambani’s company and therefore they must compromise. When reporters stood their ground citing ethics, Sood softly told them to not work at IANS if they couldn’t strike a compromise.

The reluctance to name Anil Junior is borne out in two copies put out by IANS on March 12 on the same subject: Rahul Gandhi’s speech in Gandhinagar where he took potshots at PM Modi. The first version of this copy stated that Gandhi “questioned Modi’s ‘self-proclaimed’ fight against corruption and accused him of taking financial favours from Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi, Vijay Mallya and Anil Ambani” [emphasis added]. The copy also quoted Gandhi mocking Ambani twice, once immediately after the above mentioned sentence and once at the end of the copy.

This copy was superseded by another one hours later and all mentions of Ambani were killed. With a changed headline and a little rephrasing, the same sentence now read: “Gandhi also questioned Modi’s ‘self-proclaimed’ fight against corruption and accused him of taking financial favours from industrialists such as Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya.” Gandhi’s quote mentioning Ambani that immediately followed this was also removed.

In a rather ridiculous edit, Ambani was removed from Gandhi’s quote at the end of the copy as well. So the quote, “In those queues outside banks, did you see Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi or Anil Ambani?” was modified to “In those queues outside banks, did you see Nirav Modi or Mehul Choksi?” [emphasis added]

Similarly, when Gandhi filed his nomination papers in Amethi on April 10, The Telegraph reported: “The Congress president told reporters in Amethi … that a thorough investigation should be done ‘because the first man involved in the scam is Anil Ambani and the second man is Narendra Modi’.” The Hindu’s report read: “Mr. Gandhi said that if investigation was held in the Rafale case two names would emerge, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and industrialist Anil Ambani.” However, the IANS report on this stopped awkwardly short of naming Ambani: “’Names of two people are likely to come out if investigations take place in the deal,’ he [Gandhi] added.”

However, there also have been instances in the past month when IANS reports did mention Ambani’s name, especially in the context of Gandhi’s accusatory speeches (see here and here).

A former correspondent told Newslaundry—and others corroborated this—that a story he filed on Rafale was uploaded on the website after being cleared by the desk. It was later taken down for being “anti-Rafale”. The correspondent later resigned and was asked by Sood to not come to the office during his notice period. Another reporter was given the same instruction. The reason? He had purportedly tweeted derogatorily about PM Modi.  

IANS under Bamzai has been divided into two teams. The first is the old team of reporters and the second is the team of about a dozen journalists who came to IANS with Bamzai. Most of them worked under him during his previous stint at Financial Chronicle.  This includes Anand Majumdar, currently the Editor at IANS.

Former IANS employees told Newslaundry that labour was divided accordingly at the agency: Sood was to manage the old team, and Majumdar was to look after the new one.

The old team has been frustrated with Sood’s editorial management. Some told this reporter that he had little clarity about what kind of reportage he wanted. “We were asked to do more routine stories, only to be later told that they were not the right kind of routine stories. When we did the right ones, then he’d complain about lack of special stories. The management became quite vague about what it actually wanted out of us. Reporting at IANS had become a hodge-podge,” says a former employee.

Meanwhile, the team that moved to IANS with Bamzai, managed by Majumdar, produced source-based, pro-establishment news, an erstwhile senior IANS staff member told Newslaundry.

The two teams were subject to differential treatment. Bamzai would shout regularly on the old team, telling them their work was shabby and not up to the mark. “It was a cycle of shouting. He would shout at Chandrashekhar, Chandrashekhar would shout at Sood, and Sood would shout at us,” recalls a staff member.

Bamzai’s own coterie from Financial Chronicle, however, was spared the decibels. “For him, it was your team vs. my team. He would taunt us regularly about how good his reporters were,” says a former employee.

VS Chandrashekhar quit IANS in mid-March this year. Newslaundry reached out to Prashant Sood, pointing out that there were serious allegations against him. Sood chose not to comment. Anand Majumdar also declined to comment.

Coda

A senior news professional who was associated with IANS for more than a decade told Newslaundry that Sanotra’s article in The Wire contained “half truths” and “exaggerations”. This is not improbable. Given Sanotra has not had a pleasant personal history with Bamzai (something he described at length in his piece), his accusations against him should be taken with a pinch of salt.

A former senior employee at IANS told this reporter that he was not fond of the relaxed output at IANS and the softness towards work under Sanotra. “Sandeep Bamzai is the opposite but he’s extreme,” he said. Another former employee who resigned soon after Bamzai’s arrival said: “I knew during Bamzai’s very first meeting at IANS that I wouldn’t like to continue under him.”

All members of staff whom I got in touch with resent the change in the air at IANS within a short span of time. After all, Prashant Sood did warn one of them about it—you might have liked the old state of affairs, he said, but in this new scheme of things, you do not fit.

At the IANS office, Bamzai’s room is located at the end of a long passage lined with multiple chairs and desks populated with busy staff members. During an animated 40-minute long conversation replete with fire-spitting bombast, Bamzai rubbished claims made by his former employees, especially any instructions about censoring Ambani’s name.

Bamzai talked about IANS under Sanotra the way modern folk talk about the Dark Ages. Characteristically then, his self-described mission was an enlightened one. Counting his achievement in the past three months, which includes two refurbished and ostensibly successful IANS portals on cricket and Bollywood, he said: “I am here to do a job. I’m very clear about what I have to do. I want to make IANS a vibrant news wire which should get traction across all platforms. IANS.in has been overhauled completely.”

There is indeed an overhaul at IANS. The problem is that not everyone is convinced it’s for the better.

Updated: Response from Prashant Sood

"The reporter called me hours before the release of story that had parts already written about me. This is unfair to say the least. The so-called allegations that the story refers to were not specifically put to me for response. Hence, mentioning that I refused to comment was misleading.

Days later another account, opposite of what the Newslaundry story mentioned, came on another website and I was told it gave a largely correct perspective as far as I am concerned and I should let the matters rest. But I have not been able to get over the feeling to put the record straight since the story published had falsehoods.

Of the five resignations that took place in the main reporting team since the new management came and till the article appeared, three resigned in the usual course. There were multiple personal reasons behind their decisions.

Only one reporter was on probation and the management signalled that his confirmation was unlikely. He himself went to a senior management person to ascertain his status and narrated his conversation to the team members. His account, apparently reflected in the article, has falsehoods and contradictions.

Another falsehood mentioned in the Newslaundry story was that a news report was superseded. The previous story was not withdrawn and was on the site for subscribers to pick up. There were stories in the past that had gone without the name of an individual and had been filed by the person whose opinions are apparently reflected in the Newslaundry article.

I was not to give performance assessment only for the person on probation and yet the story falsely said I was to do it for others. Another instance of misleading information. The reporter on probation was to serve 15 days notice period upon resignation, but it was conveyed to him through proper official channels that he can be on a month’s full paid leave and need not file stories or come to office.

There is also a false reference in the story about shouting by an agency veteran. It is not true and so is the subsequent mention. My interactions with team members were professional in accordance with the work demanded from the team.

Most members of the reporting section tried to adjust to the change but there were an individual or two with unending complaints and unwillingness to respond to positive suggestions and who later also displayed a fault-finding mindset.

This is only in reference to the part of the story mentioning me directly. There are other errors and falsehoods in the story as well."