Tamil Nadu Minister for Finance and Human Resources Management Palanivel Thiaga Rajan on Saturday, April 22, said the technical analysis of an audio clip purportedly attributed to him and making charges of corruption within the DMK, “clearly shows it is not authentic.”
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“So, I am forced to react at this juncture because one social media post has now been re-broadcast to lamentable proportions. It has been repeated and amplified by unscrupulous political players, and I am distressed to find that traditional media, the fourth pillar of democracy, are disseminating such fabricated, malicious third-hand information (an article about the comments of someone, about the alleged audio, about an alleged conversation with an unknown person],” he tweeted.
“Please note that the publicly available technical analysis of the alleged clip clearly shows it is not authentic,” he said.
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He said after having failed at painting him as a villain in the public sphere, there was a change of strategy to paint him as a lone crusader, a reluctant whistleblower and a pseudo martyr.
“I want to reiterate here that whatever I am, and whatever I have done in public life, it is because of my leader, DMK president and Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, and no malicious attempts to divide us will ever succeed.”
He urged politicians and the traditional media to only make allegations with, or report on, first-hand information or at least authenticated second-hand information from known sources.
“The traction gained by re-broadcasting publicly discredited third-hand click-bait may cater well to the financial viability of online platforms but corrodes the stature of traditional media in democracy.”