The Wire withdraws its stories on Meta; says reviewing its reportage

News website The Wire on Sunday retracted a series of articles about social media company Meta, and said that it is continuing to review its reportage on the matter.

Earlier this week, The Wire announced its decision to conduct an internal review of its recent coverage of Meta, especially the sources and materials involved in the reporting.

The controversy

A huge dispute had broken out between The Wire and Meta — the social media behemoth that owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – over the process of content moderation practised by Meta.

In its articles, The Wire had claimed that the chief of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Information Technology cell Amit Malviya has special privileges that enable him to get posts removed from Instagram.

Also read: Explained: 5 points in the very public spat between Meta and The Wire

Meta had refuted this saying that its processes are run entirely by technology.

The Wire statement

The Wire statement, while saying that its ongoing investigation does not yet allow it to take a conclusive view about the authenticity and bona fides of the sources with whom a member of its reporting team had been in touch over an extended period of time, admitted 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,” the statement said.

Given the discrepancies that have come to our attention via our review so far, The Wire will also conduct a thorough review of previous reporting done by the technical team involved in our Meta coverage. https://t.co/rrQCfjgLAN

— The Wire (@thewire_in) October 23, 2022

Looking at all possibilities

The Wire statement also said that it was looking at “the possibility that it was deliberately sought to misinform or deceive The Wire.”

The possibility that this could all be part of a ploy to discredit the news website was also suggested by some experts when the issue came to the fore.

The Wire statement went on to say that “lapses in editorial oversight are also being reviewed, as are editorial roles, so that failsafe protocols are put in place ensuring the accuracy of all source-based reporting.”

Also read: Don’t use apps that demand login details, Facebook warns users

“Given the discrepancies that have come to our attention via our review so far, The Wire will also conduct a thorough review of previous reporting done by the technical team involved in our Meta coverage, and remove the stories from public view till that process is complete,” the statement added.