If this is what they call journalism, we should probably pack up and go home.
This is a Telugu YouTube channel called Tejaswi News, accusing Muslim vendors of selling poisoned food at a tribal festival in Telangana.
There is no investigation, no medical evidence, and no attempt to verify whether anyone had actually fallen ill.
What there is instead are cameras pushed into people’s faces, aggressive questioning, and a single phrase repeated again and again until it starts sounding like fact: “food jihad.”
Over a series of videos, Tejaswi News turns these small-time traders selling a common local snack — a kova bun — into suspects behind a larger conspiracy.
And the anchors go from adulteration, to Rohingya Muslims, to questions about why Muslims are present at a Hindu festival at all.
In one clip, a vendor is made to eat his own food on camera, surrounded by a crowd, as proof of innocence.
This isn’t clumsy reporting or some momentary lapse in judgement.
This neatly fits into a format that has taken over large parts of the internet in India.
Selling hate
Selling communalism
Where everyday people are put on trial in public for clicks.
This is happening across the country…there are several people doing the same
It’s about how easily hate can be manufactured, scaled, and defended online — and how seamlessly it plugs into politics, money, and ideology.
Let me explain.
Let’s look at the methodology used by Tejasvi news.
The anchors didn’t approach health officials, inspectors, or records. They went straight to individual vendors.
They demanded paperwork that small traders selling freshly prepared food typically don’t have. When vendors showed confusion, the camera cut away, reframing uncertainty as guilt.
Across videos, the framing repeatedly drifted to “food jihad” — a long-standing conspiracy theory that falsely alleges that Muslims deliberately contaminate food sold to Hindus.
Soon after the videos drew criticism, the VHP publicly backed Tejaswi News and attacked critics as part of the “Tukde Tukde gang”.
What does this show? It shows how quickly an online accusation can spill into real world harassment.
Once you see this pattern, it starts showing up everywhere.
Across India, several platforms have become home to such content
These videos are usually shot in crowded public spaces and framed as spontaneous vox pops — ordinary people, unfiltered opinions, raw truth.
But as Newslaundry has extensively reported, many of these interactions are carefully managed.
There are coordinators who decide who speaks, when they step into frame, and how long they stay there.
The same faces appear again and again, sometimes as angry patriots, sometimes as worried citizens, sometimes even as minority voices who conveniently confirm majoritarian fears.
And when videos spiral into hate or misinformation, creators retreat behind a familiar excuse: we’re just recording what people are saying.
That defence collapses the moment you look at the thumbnails, the captions, and the questions being asked.
Just look at how they provoke.
This is where it’s worth pausing.
Much of what we know about these ecosystems exists because independent newsrooms have spent years doing slow, unglamorous work — tracking patterns, filing RTIs, and speaking to people targeted by these campaigns.
without this kind of journalism, stories like these would simply dissolve into noise.
If you value journalism that checks claims, follows news, and holds power to account, this is a good moment to support it.
Now, this shift in online video narratives didn’t happen accidentally.
As television news came under greater scrutiny from courts and regulators, the most extreme forms of provocation became riskier on TV.
Online platforms became the new home for the same shouting, the same dog whistles, and the same polarisation.
In Telugu, channels like Nationalist Hub and Reflection Bharat follow this template closely.
The same pattern repeats in Tamil.
Channels like Ilaya Bharatham, and Shree TV routinely frame Muslims as threats — to education, public health, law and order, or national unity.
In Karnataka, when 23-year old Neha Hiremath was stabbed to death by her classmate Fayaz, it was turned into a campaign against Muslims.
Several posts warned Hindu parents about their daughters’ Muslim friends.
Many YouTube videos invoked The Kerala Story as a rhetorical device to suggest organised conversion attempts.
Some YouTubers used any crime involving a Hindu victim and Muslim accused and connected it to the Neha Hiremath case — even when the cases were not similar or confirmed.
Pictures of Neha's dead body was circulated online with captions of love jihad
Then there is Puneeth Kerehalli.
A man who faces over 12 cases. From murder to extortion. And is notorious for livestreaming his attacks on Muslim vendors on his social media.
He is the prime accused in the murder of Muslim cattle trader Idress Pasha in 2023.
But has continued trespassing into properties owned by Muslims, threatening them and streaming it on social media.
Kerala offers some of the clearest examples of how this ecosystem operates as a business model.
The Malayalam YouTube channel Karma News has more than 1.5 million subscribers and a long record of sensational and communal content.
One of its most notorious videos claimed that students in and around Coonoor were celebrating the death of CDS Bipin Rawat.
The visuals later turned out to be from a Fresher’s Day event held before the crash.
In a story on the Caravan, journalist Alishan Jafri had chronicled the Hindi online channels thriving on hate
These channels have millions of followers.
In fact Alishan notes that the content is tailormade for virality. And once this goes viral, mainstream media picks it up and then do their round of dissection
This then allows political leaders to further polarise it.
What emerges here isn’t just hate speech.
It’s a business model.
And many of these platforms are uniquely suited for all this.
India for example is YouTube’s largest market, with more than 460 million users.
For a large section of the population, news consumed on Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp feels more authentic than mainstream media.
Investigations by groups like Access Now and Global Witness have shown how opaque advertising and recommendation systems are.
It’s often impossible to know who paid for a political or communal video, how much money went into amplifying it, or why a particular clip suddenly reaches millions.
These platforms always insist they have multiple layers of review.
But critics argue that once harmful content is live and spreading, any later intervention is already too late.
And now, this ecosystem is entering a new phase.
A report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate shows how generative AI is being used to mass-produce anti-Muslim propaganda in India.
Researchers identified more than 1,300 pieces of AI-generated hateful content across platforms — created by nearly 300 separate accounts — generating over 27 million interactions.
The report identifies four dominant themes.
The sexualisation of Muslim women.
Imagery that portrays Muslims as invaders, animals, or existential threats.
Reinforcement of conspiracy theories like “love jihad,” “population jihad,” and “rail jihad.”
And framing aggression against them as humorous, heroic, or entertaining.
Out of nearly 200 posts reported for violations, only one had been removed.
But of course, this ecosystem didn’t begin online.
These platforms did not invent Islamophobia. But have definitely further scaled it.
We also need to talk about money.
The millions of views on these videos means revenue for these channels
But YouTube, Facebook or Twitter ads are only one revenue stream.
Reporting by Newslaundry on Sudarshan News shows how government advertising can sustain hate-driven outlets. This is a channel that even the Supreme Court called divisive and have invented new jihad terms
After 2014, Sudarshan TV’s public ad income rose even as mainstream channels faced cuts.
Across Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam examples, the pattern is strikingly consistent.
But as viewers you must remember-
The Tejaswi News episode is not about kova buns. It shows how hate is produced, amplified, defended, and normalised in India’s online economy. And how difficult it is to undo the damage once it spreads.
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Produced by Megha Mukundan, Script by Lakshmi Priya, Inputs by Anjana Meenakshi, Camera by Ajay R, Edit by Nikhil Sekhar ET