Thread on media blood suckers
1. Using coronavirus as an excuse, media groups have sacked hundreds of journalists in India. Seculars and their owners don't care about India, Indians or people. Sharing an experience of the slimy and cunning ways the Indian media screws people over

2. Last year I started writing on defence and geopolitics for a magazine of the India Today group. The money offered was great - 4 articles a month would pay my mortgage without me dipping into my salary from my full time job. After 8 articles, there was no payment yet.

3. No cause for worry. Late payments are normal in the Indian media. I currently write for 2 defence magazines and sometimes payments are delayed several months. Upon enquiring with the editor in Delhi, he said he would check with accounts. Meanwhile, I wrote 4 more articles.

4. My articles were bringing large numbers of new readers to their cobwebbed website. Reader comments were pouring in. Pakistani trolls were hyperactive. It was a web editor's dream. Still no payment.

5. I enquired again. The editor said he'll forward my contact number to accounts. Things were looking positive. Ms P in accounts asked me to send an invoice. Until now, no publisher had ever asked me for an invoice but what the hell. I sent in the invoice - for 16 articles.

6. Here's what happened next. Firstly, they told me no payments would be made for stories with my full name because my bank account name is Rakesh Krishnan. Even by the high 'creative' standards of the fake news industry, this was the ultimate creative excuse.

7. Secondly, no payments would be made for stories written prior April as FY had closed. Thirdly, they would not pay for non business stories as their focus was business. Total amount denied: Rs 1 lakh.

8. I was quite cool about the whole thing. In defence and geopolitics, events are cyclical so it allows journalists to recycle/ rehash old stories. Since I never trusted Lutyens and knew their propensity to screw people over, I had re-spun a lot of my old Russian media articles.

9. New or rehashed, my stories sent the website into orbit. But for the India Today group, the priority was denying payments to a contributor. This was par for the course in an industry which is known to rip off employees.

10. In the year 2001, India Today denied a nominal Rs 1 lakh salary advance to their Chennai based correspondent L Jagadeeshan when his wife was diagnosed with cancer. He quit immediately. Jagadeeshan was one of the nicest, gentlest colleagues. He was a prolific writer too.

11. The Indian media is a snakepit. They bite the hand of the country that feeds them. And they devour each other when the times are bad. Most of the media groups like TOI, Indian Express and India Today are owned by highly profitable business houses. They generate lots of cash.

12. But sacking employees in distress during the biggest pandemic in 100 years when these employees can't step out of their homes to look for jobs
- that's the message the media is sending and they don't care what you think. That's the Indian media for you - blood suckers.
Ends