Rahul Roushan
Born (1980-01-29) 29 January 1980 (age 44)
Patna, Bihar, India
Pen namePagal Patrakaar[1]
OccupationBlogger, businessman
LanguageHindi, English
NationalityIndian
Alma materPatna University
IIM Ahmedabad
GenreCurrent affairs, Satire
Website
rahulroushan.com

Rahul Roushan (born 29 January 1980) is an Indian blogger and businessman. Roushan founded Faking News, a satirical news website, and is the CEO of OpIndia, a right-wing news portal that has been found publishing fake news on multiple occasions.[2] Originally from Patna, he is now based in Mumbai[3] and is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Mass Communication and IIM-A.[4][5]

He served as the editor of Faking News until 2016[6] and previously also worked as chief strategy officer for Swarajya, a conservative Indian magazine.[7]

In March 2020, he published his autobiography titled "Sanghi Who Never Went To A Shakha."[8] The book received positive reception from many including Kangana Ranaut, Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri and Madhav Sharma.[9]

Life

Roushan comes from the city of Patna in Bihar.[3] He graduated in Mathematics from Patna University in year 2001, and then received a postgraduate diploma in broadcast journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) in New Delhi in 2002.[citation needed] Roushan is also an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad with a Post Graduate Diploma in Management granted in 2007.[4] Roushan is settled in Mumbai, where he lives with his wife, with who he has a daughter.[10]

Career

After graduating from IIMC, Roushan worked as a copy editor, bulletin producer, and news anchor with the Hindi news channel Sahara Samay for two and a half years.[1] He left journalism to pursue higher studies at IIM Ahmedabad, wherein he turned an entrepreneur.

While still being a student, he had launched crickstock.com, a virtual gaming website, ahead of the 2007 Cricket World Cup.[4] Crickstock.com was later sold off to a US based online gaming company and Roushan chose a freelancing career as management consultant; one of his projects included helping the Bihar government set up a management institute in Patna, in 2008.[11]

In 2008, inspired by the American news satire website The Onion, Roushan started Faking News[5][3] as a blog and wrote under the pseudonym Pagal Patrakaar (crazy journalist).[1] In 2009, the blog was turned into a full-fledged website.[5] In 2013, Faking News was acquired by Firstpost, a news portal of the Network 18 group, for an undisclosed amount.[6] Roushan went on to serve as its editor till September 2016, when he switched to Swarajya as Chief Strategy Officer.[citation needed]

In November 2018, he became the CEO of a spin-off digital media startup – Aadhyaasi Media & Content Services, which took over the production of OpIndia from Swarajya.[12] Ideologically oriented towards right-wing populism,[20] OpIndia claims to be a fact-checking website,[13] but has published fake news on multiple occasions.[2] In May 2019, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), an affiliate of the Poynter Institute, rejected Roushan's application to have OpIndia certified as a fact checker.[27]

Influence

Priyanka Sharma wrote in the Business Standard that several authors followed Roushan's lead to start similar ventures as Faking News, including the founders of newsthatmattersnot.com and The UnReal Times.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Sharma, Priyanka (4 February 2012). "A spoof story". Business Standard. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  2. ^ a b [21][22][23][24][25][26]
  3. ^ a b c Borgohain, Ananya (6 July 2014). "Making Faking News". The Pioneer. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  4. ^ a b c "Rahul Roushan: Executive Profile & Biography – Bloomberg". Bloomberg. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  5. ^ a b c Bhandaram, Vishnupriya (25 March 2013). "What a fake!". The Hindu. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  6. ^ a b HT Correspondent (31 May 2013). "Firstpost buys current affairs satire portal FakingNews.com". Hindustan Times. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  7. ^ BBC Trending (17 December 2016). "False rumours and fake news cloud India's currency plan". BBC. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  8. ^ "Story of the 'Sanghi Who Never Went to a Shakha'".
  9. ^ "'Sanghi who never went to a Shakha' by Rahul Roushan winning accolades from all quarters". NewsroomPost. 2021-03-13. Retrieved 2021-06-13.
  10. ^ "About me". Rahul Roushan. Retrieved 2021-11-25.
  11. ^ "CIMP gears up to start classes from July". 8 April 2008.
  12. ^ "About me". Retrieved 2020-03-18.
  13. ^ a b Bhushan/TheWire, Sandeep (2017-01-26). "Arnab's Republic hints at mainstreaming right-wing opinion as a business". Business Standard India. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  14. ^ Ananth, Venkat (2019-05-07). "Can fact-checking emerge as big and viable business?". The Economic Times. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  15. ^ Mihindukulasuriya, Regina (2019-05-08). "BJP supporters have a secret weapon in their online poll campaign — satire". ThePrint. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  16. ^ Ghosh, Labonita (17 June 2018). "The troll who turned". Mumbai Mirror. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  17. ^ Manish, Sai (8 April 2018). "Busting fake news: Who funds whom?". Rediff. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  18. ^ Chaturvedi, Swati (2016). I Am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP's Digital Army. Juggernaut Books. pp. 11, 23. ISBN 9789386228093.
  19. ^ "Tables Turn on Twitter's Hindutva Warriors, and It's the BJP Doing the Strong-Arming". The Wire. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  20. ^ [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]
  21. ^ "Search results for OpIndia". Alt News. Archived from the original on 16 March 2020. Retrieved 16 March 2020.
  22. ^ "Search results for OpIndia". Boom. Archived from the original on 16 March 2020. Retrieved 16 March 2020.
  23. ^ Chakrabarti, Santanu; Stengel, Lucile; Solanki, Sapna (20 November 2018). "Duty, Identity, Credibility: 'Fake News' and the ordinary citizen in India" (PDF). BBC. pp. 87–88. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  24. ^ Khuhro, Zarrar (9 July 2018). "Digital death". Dawn. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  25. ^ Kumar, Basant (3 January 2020). "Fake news, lies, Muslim bashing, and Ravish Kumar: Inside OpIndia's harrowing world". Newslaundry. Retrieved 3 January 2020.
  26. ^ Alam, Mahtab (15 May 2020). "Bihar: Case Against Rightwing Sites For Fake Claims of Communal Angle in Minor's Murder". The Wire. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  27. ^ Kaur, Kanchan (11 February 2019). "Conclusions and recommendations on the application by OpIndia.com". International Fact-Checking Network. Archived from the original on 10 March 2019. Retrieved 12 December 2019.((cite web)): CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
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