Activist Saket Gokhale has issued a notice to Zee News over a communal tweet that the news channel posted on Sunday. Saket said he has issued the notice to the channel under the new IT Rules, 2021.
“Time to invoke the new IT Rules I guess. I’ve issued a notice to @ZeeNews under the new IT Rules, 2021 against this rabidly communal & discriminatory tweet posted by them yesterday. Hope you’re watching @rsprasad because I intend to use your new law fully in this case,” the activist wrote on Twitter.
The news channel known for its biased and Islamophobic reporting put out a tweet on their official page targeting the Muslim community. The channel put out a tweet in Hindi which translates to, “Nature is a mere excuse to increase the population of Muslims.”
This is not the first time that the channel put out Islamophobic content. Earlier in 2020 when India was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, the channel among many other news outlets tried to give the pandemic a communal angle by using the Tablighi Jamaat incident as the main target and spreading hate against the Muslims.
In April 2020, a petition by the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind in the Supreme Court had alleged that the “unfortunate incident of the Tablighi Jamaat was used to demonise and blame the entire Muslim community” on social media and in sections of print and electronic media. It had noted that “Islamophobic headlines” and “incendiary statements by TV news anchors” led to the “communalisation” of the issue.
The TV news media was the factory where anti-Muslim hatred was produced, packaged and exported in the wake of the Tablighi Jamaat congregation. In a report in April, Newslaundry had pointed out how channels like Zee News, India TV, News 18 India, News Nation and Republic TV had anchors and panelists taking jibes at Muslims and Islam on their shows on the congregation in Delhi’s Nizamuddin neighbourhood.