Author:
Publication: www.siliconindia.com
Date: June 18, 2003
URL: http://www.siliconindia.com/tech/tech_pgtwo.asp?newsno=838&newscat==Top
The original article, as it was
pubished in CHICAGO TRIBUNE, is attached at the end.
Indian Americans are up in arms
against the Chicago Tribune for its "distorted" coverage of Deputy Prime
Minister L.K. Advani's U.S. visit last week.
Prominent community leaders have
charged the Chicago Tribune, the third largest newspaper in the U.S., with
grossly distorting attendance at a reception for Advani and blowing out
of proportion the number of protestors outside the venue.
A half page report in the Tribune
also made only passing references to Advani's speeches, including one at
the Chicago Council of Foreign Affairs.
According to Bharat Barai, a well-known
oncologist and one of the organisers of the Indian community reception
for Advani here, Chicago Tribune's article by its reporter Noreen Ahmed-Ullah
"contained a lot of factual errors".
While completely missing the theme
of Advani's talk, Barai said that the newspaper overestimated the number
of protestors and grossly underestimated the number of people who attended
the dinner.
The newspaper said that there were
over 200 protestors outside a downtown hotel where Advani attended the
event. In actual fact, said Barai, "there were not more than 36 people".
Barai is a professor of medicine,
medical director of the Methodist Hospitals and a member of the Indiana
State Medical Licensing Board. He has also been an "avid reader" of the
Chicago Tribune for the past 27 years.
In a strongly worded protest letter
to Don Wycliff, the Tribune's public editor, Barai said: "I do not knew
where (these 200 protestors) disappeared so quickly. I was aware of the
protest and had been looking out of the lounge window at frequent intervals.
I never saw more than 36 people at any point."
Barai noted that the Tribune had
said that "dozens" of Indians attended the dinner. Community leaders put
the number of attendees at 1,100. Barai said that he had photographs and
videos of the event, which would prove his point.
In his response to Barai, Wycliff
wrote: "Ideally we would have gotten a precise attendance figure for the
dinner, but it was not inaccurate to say dozens."
This caused an incensed Barai to
retort: "If the reporter would have used similar currency to describe both
events, it would be understandable, though amusing. The reporter could
have said there was more than one person to hear Advani and there was more
than one person to protest.
"Instead of quoting the 2000 census
figures of the 124,000 Indian Americans in Chicago, she could have said
there are dozens of Indian Americans in the area. That would be accurate
too. Should I look forward to reading such Mickey Mouse arithmetic in Chicago
Tribune in the future? The Chicago Tribune is a great newspaper and deserves
more humility."
Lakshmana Rao, managing editor of
the Chicago based ethnic newspaper, India Tribune, who attended the dinner
as well as Advani's talk at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations at
the same venue said the Chicago Tribune report was an example of bad journalism.
"As a journalist, I must say that
the reporter sorely needs a lesson in objective reporting. She appears
to have begun the report with a negative mindset. It is a sad reflection
on the newspaper."
Rao has been editor of several editions
of the Indian Express and the Deccan Chronicle.
Rao said Advani spoke a lot on how
terrorism had affected India and how the U.S. and India could join hands
to fight global terrorism. The talk was very well received by an elite
audience of mostly Americans.
"In today's climate, these statements
are definitely more newsworthy than what the Chicago Tribune carried,"
he said.
Four years back, Indian community
leaders had protested to the Chicago Tribune over a column that described
Indians as "taxi drivers and curry eaters".
Following nationwide email protests
by Indian Americans and meetings of community leaders with the editors
of Chicago Tribune, the newspaper printed an apology, only the second in
its history.
