A post is being circulated on social media with a claim that the Supreme Court of India had recently banned ‘TV9 Telugu’ news channel for spreading fake news, creating controversies about people, and showing unwanted information on their channel. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Supreme Court banned ‘TV9 Telugu’ news channel for spreading fake news.
Fact: The Supreme Court of India had never passed such orders to ban the ‘TV9 Telugu’ news channel. This news was created by a meme creator Instagram page named ‘Trendy Trollers’. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched to check whether the Supreme Court of India had issued any such orders to ban ‘TV9 Telugu’ channel on the television network, we could not find any news articles or videos reporting this information on the internet. If Supreme Court had issued such orders, several news outlets would have published articles reporting this information.
On the image shared in the post, we could see a logo of ‘Trendy Trollers’. When searched for this image using these keywords, we found the same image on the Instagram handle named ‘Trendy Trollers’. In the description of the Instagram page, ‘Trendy Trollers’ proclaimed itself as a meme creating platform. ‘Trendy Trollers’ published this meme of the Supreme Court banning the ‘TV9 Telugu’ news channel on 16 September 2021. A few other memes created by Trendy Trollers can be seen here and here.
In June 2014, the Telangana Government passed a resolution in the state Assembly authorizing the speaker to initiate action on ‘TV9 Telugu’ and ‘ABN Andhra Jyothi’ for telecasting objectional news that degraded elected legislators. Following this, Telangana multiple system operators (MSOs) stopped the telecast of these channels. According to a news report, the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) in October 2014, had given an order in favour of TV9 to restore its telecast over cable TV networks. After this incident, ‘TV9 Telugu’ has never been banned in the Telugu states.
To sum it up, the Supreme Court of India had not banned the ‘TV9 Telugu’ news channel for spreading fake news.
