Value 360 takes legal action against auto blogger's posts alleging attempt to influence client stories

 6th July 2020    PR News 
 Paarul Chand

Value 360 has filed a criminal complaint against an auto blogger after the latter posted allegations of attempt to influence him to take down negative posts about Value 360's client. At the time of filing the post had been deleted from the blogger's Instagram page.

This is the full statement tweeted by Value 360 regarding the incident, Value 360 says the email address of their colleague mentioned in the post has been falsified and does not belong to their colleague and denies any such email was sent:

We want to bring to your notice a malicious act that has been done by one of the Instagram profiles which has led to tainting brand image on false grounds & #CyberBullying one of our employees. We stand by our employees and for sure will not accept this under any circumstances. pic.twitter.com/GZpaZB5Bt9

— Value360 (@value_360) July 4, 2020

Speaking with PRmoment India regarding the development, Kunal Kishore, founder director Value 360 Communications said, "As an organization, Value 360 Communications follows a set of rules and ethics in the domain of PR and reputation management. Over the last decade, we have grown from being a emerging PR agency to one of the country’s top communications and reputation management firms. This growth has come on the back of our value system that every Value 360 employee abides by."

Kishore adds that, "We take pride in what we do and will not allow anyone to attack our value system by resorting to a mala fide act of digital impersonation and cyberbullying of our employees. We have already filed a criminal complaint against Mr Yash Vinayak Mehrotra, for breaching the right to privacy and outraging the modesty of our female employee, by sharing her personal coordinates on a public platform.

Our employee has been receiving harassing calls from unknown numbers, causing her psychological trauma. We have taken this matter very seriously and will ensure that our legal team takes this to a logical conclusion."

Kishore said, "We have also filed a defamation suit against the person for fraudulently creating an email account in the name of our employee and posting fabricated content on social media, alleging that we offered him money for favourable coverage for one of our clients. In today’s day and age with the digital footprint that is left it is very easy for the police and court to identify if the email was actually sent by us or not. We have full faith in the justice system of our country and believe that truth will stand victorious, leading to strict punishment for the culprit."

Kishore concluded saying, "We are elated that our client completely supported and trusted us. They stood by our integrity and our ethics to stand up for our employees and to condemn any acts of malpractice.

PRCAI also put out a statement on Monday condemning the blogger's actions:

PRCAI strongly condemns all acts of cyber bullying and those responsible for deliberately spreading fake and malicious social posts naming our member firm and their employee. https://t.co/DG3jdVdQzR pic.twitter.com/mrV23DwIUt

— PRCAI (@PRCAIndia) July 6, 202

PRmoment India also tried to contact the blogger concerned via phone calls and SMS to get his point of view but did not receive any response till the time of filing.

This is a rare development that a PR firm decides to take legal action against a blogger. There have long been complaints about the lack of standards and ethics in the influencer market by both bloggers as well as PR firms.