NDTV Staffers endorse now-deleted blog post on I&B meeting

NDTV‘s appeal against the one-day ban on its Hindi channel will be heard on December 5 by the Supreme Court. This is believed to follow a meeting between the channel’s officials and the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting M. Venkaiah Naidu, the decision to take NDTV India off air was put on hold.

The Indian Express ran story this morning pointing to a blog post that claimed an entirely different scenario in a meeting between the channel and the ministry. The post, authored by Amit Sen on his blog Angry Lok titled “Why the NDTV ban was put on hold” claimed it was the ministry that approached NDTV to meet Naidu for a resolution because “the government was in panic mode” since “the entire media was standing behind NDTV, opinion polls done, including those on right-wing websites, showed that NDTV had massive public sympathy”.

Now a theory on a lone blog wouldn’t have gained much currency, had senior NDTV staffers, and even the channel’s co-founder not endorsed the post publicly on Twitter.  

Maya Mirchandani is NDTV’s foreign affairs editor, while Suparna Singh is the channel’s director of strategy, and the managing editor of its website. While Singh shared what she believed was the “inside story”, Prannoy Roy, who is NDTV’s co-founder, retweeted the tweet.

The Indian Express spoke to Press Information Bureau Director General Frank Noronha, who was present at the meeting. He told the paper, “The Minister did not invite anybody for any meeting from NDTV.”

“In fact, an appointment was sought by Prannoy Roy,” he clarified.

Noronha added: “That is absolute rubbish and sensational exaggeration.”

Curiously enough, the post was not available on the blog from around 10 this morning,  and the whole blog was deleted around two this afternoon.