[13] Prem Prakash started his career in the field of photography, working for Visnews (and Reuters) as a photojournalist, where he went on to cover some of the most significant historical events in post-independence India.
[9][7] In 1971, Prem established ANI (initially TVNF, India's first television news feature agency), which gained influence within the Congress Government.
[9] The daughter of Inna Ramamohan Rao, former director of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting married Prem's son Sanjiv in 1988, which furthered ANI's access within the government.
[9] By 2000, India saw a boom of private 24/7 news channels; however, unsustainable revenue models meant that they lacked the capacity to hire video-reporters across the country.
[9] ANI continued to be trusted by the upcoming UPA governments, to the extent that the Ministry of External Affairs chose Smita to be a part of the two-member contingent of Indian journalists at both of the joint press conferences between the incumbent prime ministers of India and the United States.
[7] Under new management, ANI has been accused of practising an aggressive model of journalism focused on maximum revenue output where journalists were considered dispensable.
The filing accused Wikipedia of publishing "false and defamatory content with the malicious intent of tarnishing the news agency's reputation, and aimed to discredit its goodwill".
[19][16][20][21] On 5 September, the Court threatened to hold Wikimedia guilty of contempt for failing to disclose information about the editors who had made changes to the article and warned that Wikipedia might be blocked in India upon further non-compliance.
[8] On 28 October, the Wikimedia Foundation agreed to the court's request to disclose the identifying information of online users involved in editing the ANI page.
[31] In October 2024, before the lawsuit was filed, OpenAI had blocked ANI through its opt-out policy, which allows websites to opt out of automated use of their text by web scrapers.
[35] A 2019 Association for Computing Machinery conference paper that analysed the Twitter activity of BJP members of parliament identified that "the highest levels of engagement are with those [accounts] known to be pro-ruling party – ie the party media mouthpiece (BJP Live), the two national news outlets - Doordarshan and All India Radio, and the ruling party-aligned Asian News International (ANI)".
The report also concluded that they had spread anti-Pakistan and sometimes anti-China disinformation with the primary aim of this fake news coverage being to "discredit Pakistan" in international forums.
[10] ANI is also believed to have gained access to India's intelligence establishment in recent years; in foreign affairs many of its videos depicted protests by fringe lobby groups and activists as if they were large-scale and mainstream.
[43][44] In April 2023, ANI falsely reported a photo of a padlocked grave in Hyderabad, India, as being from Pakistan, claiming it was locked to prevent necrophilia.
The controversy erupted after ANI shared a video on social media, which falsely depicted a Hindu father pleading for justice for his missing son.
Despite ANI deleting the video after being called out for the misleading content, the misinformation continued to circulate on various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, perpetuating the false narrative.