This man, with a fighter jet parked behind him, is Sudhir Chaudhary, editor-in-chief of Zee News, who once plagiarised a “ jihad flowchart ” to explain concepts such as “love jihad”, “movies and songs jihad”, and “direct jihad”.

Yet, being the editor-in-chief of Zee News isn’t Chaudhary’s only job. He’s also the editor-in-chief and chief executive officer of WION News, a news channel that recently partnered with Deutsche Welle, or DW, Germany’s public international broadcaster.

And DW has stringent guidelines for its programming, content and working principles, including the four principles that this report opens with.

Chaudhary's journalism is problematic, to say the least. Upset by the exit polls predicting the Aam Aadmi Party’s victory in the Delhi Assembly election earlier this year, he shamed the capital’s voters by suggesting they only voted for a party that promised “free stuff” without caring about “national issues”. He slandered students of Jamia Millia Islamia University when the Delhi police teargassed them, and used bogus claims to demonise the citizenship law protests earlier this year. After attendees of a Tablighi Jamaat congregation tested positive for Covid-19, Chaudhary’s primetime segment was replete with anti-Muslim dogwhistling.

The WION statement on its partnership with DW says it’s “aimed at working locally in our target regions and to endure that our content caters to our audience's interests and demands. Through this partnership, DW correspondents will bring ground reports and in-depth analysis for our viewers”.

One of the first reports to emerge from this partnership was an April 24 report on divisions between European Union leaders over economic relief packages.

Notwithstanding its occasional forays into hyperbole , WION is a rather respectable news channel. It was launched by the Zee Media Corporation in 2016. The following year, its then editor-in-chief, Rohit Gandhi, who was part of the founding team, quit and Chaudhary took over.

Chaudhary himself doesn’t host a regular show on WION, though he occasionally pops up in its reports.