India’s biggest media conglomerate, the Times of India Group, has asked its employees to declare all their personal accounts on social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook and asked them to refrain from sharing news related links. The official explanation for what many see as an autocratic policy impinging on the freedom of speech is that TOI merely seeks to get its policy in line with international organizations such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. What is the real reason though? Why did TOI suddenly decide to regulate its employees’ accounts?
Does it have anything to do with a certain Sagarika Ghose joining the print group? We decided to go through her Twitter timeline.
This was her first tweet on the day of her joining:
Amazing to meet same securityguard at @timesofindia from the time I started my career there over 2 decades ago! we recog each other at once!
— Sagarika Ghose (@sagarikaghose) August 25, 2014
And then all hell broke loose:
And the rest is history.
(With inputs from UnReal Mama [Karthik])