Wire has retracted its stories on Meta after discovering “certain discrepancies” in its reporting, the Indian outlet said Sunday, marking what should be an end to the high-profile drama with the social juggernaut that captured the interest of newsrooms and tech companies globally for two weeks.
The move follows Wire, a small but gutsy Indian news outlet, setting up an internal review process to evaluate its reporting earlier this week after the subject of the firm — Meta — and the independent sources it relied on vehemently denied the newsroom’s reporting.
“Our investigation, which is ongoing, does not as yet allow us to take a conclusive view about the authenticity and bona fides of the sources with whom a member of our reporting team says he has been in touch over an extended period of time,” Wire said in a statement.
Wire reported earlier this month that Meta gave governing party BJP’s top digital operative an unchecked ability to remove content from Instagram and ran a series of follow-ups, asserting Meta was insincere in its public denials. In one of the stories, Wire cited what it claimed as an internal email from Meta comms Andy Stone. In another, it cited testimonies from independent security researchers who vouched for the authenticity of Stone’s email to Wire.
The Indian news organization said Sunday that “certain discrepancies have emerged in the material used.”
“These include the inability of our investigators to authenticate both the email purportedly sent from a*****@fb.com as well as the email purportedly received from Ujjwal Kumar (an expert cited in the reporting as having endorsed one of the findings, but who has, in fact, categorically denied sending such an email). As a result, The Wire believes it is appropriate to retract the stories.”
(More to follow)
India’s Wire retracts reports on Meta citing discrepancies by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch