If you are a regular consumer of Tamil news and political content on YouTube, you know all about this. If you are one who has not been paying attention, or are entirely new to the bewildering world of Tamil YouTube channels, here is what is happening.
Madan Ravichandran, a popular content creator who has earlier worked as a journalist in several Tamil news organisations, and later joined and then quit the BJP, has been releasing a series of “sting” videos supposedly exposing several popular YouTube personalities and political operatives. He alleges these people are corrupt individuals who take money to defame people and influence elections. He describes his channel, Mars Tamil Nadu, as a channel against "corruption, defamation and all paid media illegal activities." In a series of videos which are still being released one by one – he says he has done 15 stings and has only released six as I write this – several prominent personalities who rake in millions of views with their appearances online are shown accepting cash and gifts, allegedly in return for agreeing to work on “defamation” campaigns against political opponents of the BJP, or anyone for that matter. Some of them gloat about the money they have made in the past working on such campaigns. The videos were reportedly recorded by a person representing a company which does political consultancy work and wants to run defamation campaigns against political opponents.
Madan’s targets have issued denials, and ask that he release the whole clips instead of just small clips. They allege that he is playing out his personal vendettas through this campaign, and that he is working at the behest of someone else. Who? Wild theories are floating around — that this is Madan's own revenge plot against other YouTubers, that Madan is a DMK proxy, and a third theory that he has been funded by BJP insiders unhappy with the current leadership.
Regardless of the truth, the YouTube ecosystem is facing a major credibility crisis, and this is perhaps a good moment to reflect on how “influencers” have further destroyed news.
Madan alleges that these creators and operatives are mercenaries who are on sale to attack anyone for the right price. But it is clear that this is not just a story of exposing corruption, it is a saga of petty personal rivalries and internecine professional wars among a bunch of amateur content creators who are surprisingly well-entrenched in the political ecosystem of Tamil Nadu, all vying for the same pot of money, power, and fame. In these videos, clad in a maroon suit and sitting alongside his work partner Venba Geethayan, Madan doles out his personal histories with those he is exposing, many of them having worked with him in the past. He mocks their bodies and accents, throws around thinly veiled insults, like a Mean Girls version of Tamil YouTube boys.
Madan himself has a colourful history and questionable credentials. He has evidently jumped political sides several times, and was at one point close to TN BJP chief Annamalai. The reason he quit the BJP was that he, allegedly in collaboration with Annamalai, conducted a “sting operation” against several senior leaders of the BJP who were sexually harassing women within the party. Only one video made it out, that of now disgraced BJP general secretary KT Raghavan. The rest of the videos, Madan’s opponents allege, were buried because he was paid up. He says that he went underground after those stings fearing for his life. After the KT Raghavan video release, Annamalai publicly distanced himself from Madan and fired him from the party. Madan says that he was used and dumped by Annamalai.
Unsurprisingly, one of Madan’s main targets is the TN BJP, especially Annamalai and his coterie. Among those “stung” are TN BJP’s Amar Prasad Reddy, considered Annamalai’s key confidante, who is allegedly heard talking about targeting his own party colleagues to get ahead of them. And there is Ravindran Duraiswamy, a “political analyst” known for his pro-Hindutva opinions, who is seen accepting a one-gram gold ring and some cash as advance to work on political campaigns. One of the main characters who appears in many of these videos is Kishore K Swamy, an online troll who was arrested for abusing women journalists a couple of years ago, is known to work closely for the TN BJP, and openly propagates the Hindutva ideology. Kishore seems to have been a key link for Madan’s team to get introduced to YouTube creators and political operatives across party lines, including former DMK IT Wing member Uma Maheshwaran, who now heads One India. Despite the well-documented allegations against him, Kishore seems to have built an influential proximity with the TN BJP's leadership.
Madan dedicates an entire episode, the first one in the series, to speaking about his experience with Annamalai and how his insecure and arrogant leadership style and internal rivalries triggered by people around him are bringing the party down. But it is important to note here that Madan doesn’t present himself as an ideological opponent of the BJP, but almost a well-wisher who wants the party to be better.
The Tamil meme universe responded in kind. Within hours of the first two videos being published, meme creators flooded social media with hilarious content on those caught in the videos. But there was palpable anger too. In my opinion, this is an important moment in the history of Tamil political YouTube channels, because lakhs of people are now witness to the ecosystem's dark and rotten underbelly. Content creators taking money under the table, being willing to tarnish anyone for personal gains, doubling up as political operatives who attack or defend candidates in return for access and money – these visuals have triggered a credibility crisis, whether there's truth to Madan's claims or not. If you scroll through the thousands of comments on this issue, you can see that people are genuinely shocked that these creators could be so deeply compromised. Regardless of the truth of these “stings”, these videos have forever altered the idea of YouTube creators in people’s minds. We will forever wonder – how much could this guy have been paid to speak like this?
The most surprising fallout of these videos has been how many of these content creators have owned up to being political operatives and taking money for working on political campaigns. While many of them have issued some kind of denial, like they returned the money or that the gifts were given to them forcibly, the larger narrative they are trying to set is – so what if we took money?
Former anti-corruption-crusader and once-ardent anti-Sanghi activist, Savukku Shankar, who was jailed in Tamil Nadu recently for contempt of court, and has since started openly aligning himself with the BJP, says in his English blog, “None of the personalities who received money are public servants. They have not committed any offence. They are private employees, who go there for business opportunities. Like mainstream media, YouTube channels also require advertisements and business to sustain themselves. They are not running a charity. So these guys went there for a business opportunity and some went overboard and flaunted. They have not committed any sin. It is the other person who shot the videos [who has] committed an offence.” Apparently, political content creators modelling themselves as neutral news anchors taking money to defame political opponents is not corruption according to Savukku, who appears frequently on many of these channels.
Pesu Thamizha Pesu’s Rajavel Nagarajan – who was caught taking a bottle of booze and wad of cash on camera but says he returned the cash the next day and took the booze only as a mark of respect to his guest – says that political consultancy is one of his content company’s business verticals and he has always taken money for political work. He openly asks, “Don’t YouTube creators have families? Don’t they have expenses?” They do, Rajavel. The question is, why didn’t you tell hundreds of thousands of your unsuspecting viewers that you take money to achieve political goals through your channels? The same question also needs to be asked of “political analyst” Ravindran Duraiswamy, who has brazened it out by saying that he did take money and the gold ring, and he does take money for political work, although he asks for his entire conversation to be published too.
Media-owners or political journalists being corrupt is nothing new. There are scores of examples of rotten apples in the media cart – Zee expose, Radia tapes etc. But what is different is that with mainstream media, individuals were bypassing the checks and balances within solid journalistic institutions to get involved in corruption. In the case of these dime-a-dozen YouTube creators, there are no institutions to bypass, there are no checks and balances to manoeuvre.
As viewers, we have to start increasingly discerning who is credible and who is not, and not based on assumptions or political bias, but based on the journalistic process being followed by the institutions which deliver the news. Is the person speaking on the mobile screen just dishing stuff out with a fake air of authority, or doing so with careful attribution, substantiation and proof? Are they part of an organisation which is transparent about its editorial processes, which are strong and not easy to bypass? Is the person reporting from the ground and reporting all sides of the story? Should I suspect a journalist just because I don’t agree with their politics? We need to ask these questions as viewers when we consume content, and a discerning viewer is more effective than any sting operation done to expose corruption in the YouTube ecosystem.
The writer is a former journalist and presently a member of The News Minute’s business team. Views expressed are the author's own.
Editor’s Note: The article earlier had an error with respect to the reason why Savukku Shankar was jailed. He was arrested after a judge initiated contempt of court proceedings against him. The article has been edited to rectify the error.