Rahul Roushan

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 published fake news.[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][6]

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

He served as the editor of Faking News until 2016[7] and previously also worked as chief strategy officer for Swarajya, a conservative Indian magazine.[4][8]

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.[4] Roushan is also an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad with a Post Graduate Diploma in Management granted in 2007.[4][5] Roushan is settled in Mumbai, where he lives with his wife.[3]

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.[4][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][5] Crickstock.com was later sold off to a US based online gaming company and Roushan chose a freelancing career as management consultant;[9] one of his projects included helping the Bihar government set up a management institute in Patna, in 2008.[10]

In 2008, inspired by the American news satire website The Onion, Roushan started Faking News[6][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.[6] In 2013, Faking News was acquired by Firstpost, a news portal of the Network 18 group, for an undisclosed amount.[7] Roushan went on to serve as its editor till September 2016, when he switched to Swarajya as Chief Strategy Officer.[4]

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.[11] Ideologically oriented towards right-wing populism,[19] OpIndia claims to be a fact-checking website,[12] 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.[26]

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. Sharma, Priyanka (4 February 2012). "A spoof story". Business Standard. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  2. [20][21][22][23][24][25]
  3. Borgohain, Ananya (6 July 2014). "Making Faking News". The Pioneer. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  4. Swarajya Staff (18 September 2016). "Rahul Roushan Joining Swarajya As Chief Strategy Officer". Swarajya. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  5. "Rahul Roushan: Executive Profile & Biography – Bloomberg". Bloomberg. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  6. Bhandaram, Vishnupriya (25 March 2013). "What a fake!". The Hindu. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  7. HT Correspondent (31 May 2013). "Firstpost buys current affairs satire portal FakingNews.com". Hindustan Times. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  8. BBC Trending (17 December 2016). "False rumours and fake news cloud India's currency plan". BBC. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
  9. "Swarajya Conversations: Join Us For An Hour-Long Chat With Raghav Bahl In Delhi". 15 December 2016.
  10. "CIMP gears up to start classes from July". 8 April 2008.
  11. "About me". Retrieved 2020-03-18.
  12. 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.
  13. Ananth, Venkat (2019-05-07). "Can fact-checking emerge as big and viable business?". The Economic Times. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  14. Mihindukulasuriya, Regina (2019-05-08). "BJP supporters have a secret weapon in their online poll campaign — satire". ThePrint. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  15. Ghosh, Labonita (17 June 2018). "The troll who turned". Mumbai Mirror. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  16. Manish, Sai (8 April 2018). "Busting fake news: Who funds whom?". Rediff. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  17. Chaturvedi, Swati (2016). I Am a Troll: Inside the Secret World of the BJP's Digital Army. Juggernaut Books. pp. 11, 23. ISBN 9789386228093.
  18. "Tables Turn on Twitter's Hindutva Warriors, and It's the BJP Doing the Strong-Arming". The Wire. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  19. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]
  20. "Search results for OpIndia". Alt News. Archived from the original on 16 March 2020. Retrieved 16 March 2020.
  21. "Search results for OpIndia". Boom. Archived from the original on 16 March 2020. Retrieved 16 March 2020.
  22. 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.
  23. Khuhro, Zarrar (9 July 2018). "Digital death". Dawn. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  24. Kumar, Basant (3 January 2020). "Fake news, lies, Muslim bashing, and Ravish Kumar: Inside OpIndia's harrowing world". Newslaundry. Retrieved 3 January 2020.
  25. 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.
  26. 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.CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
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