Sathya Sai Baba forced his editor to lie outright

Sathya Sai Baba actually repeatedly asked V.K. Narasimhan – against his own will – to write in the press in the defence of the Sathya Sai Central Trust after the corruption allegations, which Narasimhan eventually did despite his own strong misgivings, in The Tribune/Chandigath, of which his son was the editor at that time). Baba said to him several times that he could easily refute the allegations in his previous papers, The Hindu or the Indian Express.

Narasimhan said to me that Baba would not listen when he told him that the editors regard Narasimhan as partial and would not publish anything he wrote. Baba insisted, and so Narasimhan sent his contributions, which were duly rejected from those papers. He told me that, though he had written other than he considered to be the truth, he had done ‘his filial duty’ towards Baba. (see here) He freely admitted the difficulty of his position, but felt that overall Sathya Sai Baba did represent some progress in education and health, compared with the increasingly stagnant, ineffectual and corrupt governments that ruled India in recent times.

V.K. Narasimhan and Robert Priddy - 1998

Though Sathya Sai Baba promised him a free hand when he initially became editor of Sanathana Sarathi, he soon found that the limits set upon him were very rigorous. He could not go against Sai Baba – the emperor of Prashanthi Nilayam – and was punished when once he did so. He had to reproduce the glowing accounts of festivals and Sai Baba’s effect on people which had become de rigeur well before his time, and he even penned some himself. He became gradually more and more dependent on life at the ashram in his dotage – his wife being a total devotee who would never leave the ashram – and the attention he received from Sai Baba, his students and visitors gave him a life of popularity after retirement. He told me how he had become trapped there, that he really did not belong and that he doubted many of Sai Baba’s claims. See here