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The age of one-sided news!

The age of one-sided news!

Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: Afternoon Despatch & Courier
Date: January 23, 2004

Introduction: The 'secular' press is entitled to damn anyone in its editorial columns, but the reader is entitled to know the truth.

Does anyone remember the Best Bakery Case and all the hullabulloo that was made over it? The secular media took the opportunity to call the Gujarat government over the coals, especially when a lower court discharged the accused.

As The Free Press Journal (Jan. 16) editorially put it: "After the lower court's judgement, the secularists had launched a shrill campaign in which, unfortunately, even the apex court of the land too was dragged in. The Supreme Court of India and the National Human Rights Commission erred on the side of excessive zeal in openly coming out on the side of the detractors of the lower court's order. Now, no less than the Gujarat High Court has vindicated the lower court and, presumably, left these busybodies out to garner sympathy and support from the noisy secularists, totally speechless".

Word for word

If the so-called secular media had an sense of self-respect it should have reproduced the Gujarat High Court's judgement word for word. That, it didn't. Indeed most newspapers maintained a highly undignified silence. The only party to cover the case in the Gujarat High Court was the Press Trust of India - or so it seems. Exactly how well and at what length the case was covered is hard to say. Very few newspapers published the PTI report.

Short accounts were published by two newspapers, The Statesman (Jan. 14) and The Telegraph (Jan. 13). To its credit The Statesman published the report on the front page, indicating the importance of the event and the significance of the judgement. It will be remembered that the key witness in the Best Bakery Case, 19-year-old Zaheera Sheikh, had turned hostile during the first trial. Commenting on this the Gujarat High Court said: "There seems to be a definite conspiracy to malign people by misusing her".

Said the Division Bench of Mr. Justice B.J. Sethna and Mr. Justice J.R. Vohra: "We are not prepared to believe that she (Zaheera) turned hostile because she was threatened for deposing before the Court on June 27, 2003, Zaheera is hardly 19- years-old and can play into the dirty hands of anti-social and anti-national elements".

On Zaheera's affidavit in the Supreme Court, the Bench observed: "She came out with the case that she was threatened and therefore could not speak the truth only after an English daily approached her following the acquittal judgement".

Zaheera had been given shelter by a Mumbai-based NGO a few days after the acquittal. She had also addressed a press conference in Mumbai. Observed the Bench: "We've a reasonable apprehension that there is a deep-rooted conspiracy to misuse Zaheera".

The Telegraph report was a little bit more specific. According to the paper the Bench had added that "An attempt has been made by journalists, Human Rights activist Teesta Setalvad and Advocate Mihir Desai to have a parallel investigating agency. We do not know how far it is proper, but we can state that it is not permissible under the law." Let it be said that the reporting of the case has been, to say the least, extraordinarily poor. The media has shown an extraordinary sense of irresponsibility in glossing over the High Court judgement.

As The Free Press Journal noted "The judgement of the Gujarat High Court in the Best Bakery case, whereby it rejected the appeal of the state government against the acquittal of all the 21 accused by the lower court, ought to be made compulsory reading for the secularists and the self-serving NGO industry run by them. That the High Court's decision has to found favour with these self-appointed guardians of public morals is proved beyond doubt by the scant notice given to it in the media under their control. While the acquittal by the fast-track trial judge was played up in screaming headlines, as if the court had committed a huge crime in finding the accused not guilty, the High Court judgement endorsing the same court's acquittal of all the 21 accused as correct in law and dismissed as a filler in some obscure corner of the secularist press".

In a biting editorial entitled "A welcome rebuff to secularists" The Free Press Journal, in confirmation of its long tradition of being "free and fearless", gave the secularists the long-delayed slap in the face. It said - and the entire editorial, incidentally, is worth repeating - in the end: "For sure, there are moves afoot to pin holes in the Gujarat High Court judgement in order to ensure its reversal. For, the secularists having concluded in their mind that the 21 accused in the case were guilty, wanted the courts to do nothing other than to endorse their view regardless of whether there existed the required evidence to convict them. Such intolerance reveals a fascist streak in the mental make-up of secularists. A truly open society provides space for all manner of thought processes to compete, but our secularists, and the media controlled by them, are so authoritarian that they seek to bar all voices from being heard, other than their own. Hopefully, the Gujarat High Court verdict will act as a sobering influence on them, at least for some time till they latch on to another Zaheera to exploit for their own partisan ends". Brave words. And only The Free Press Journal has had the courage to expose the cowardice of the secularists.

The Hindustan Times (January 14), no friend of the Gujarat government, conceded, somewhat uncomfortably, it seems, that "as the High Court has said, the possibility exists that witnesses such as Zaheera Sheikh lay themselves open to manipulation by unhealthy interests and that could very well be the reason for their first turning hostile and subsequently offering intimidation by pogrom perpetrators as the reason for doing so".

Several questions arise: Considering the importance of the Best Bakery Case and the way it was used to damn the Gujarat Government, why didn't every important newspaper cover the trial in the Gujarat High Court and its judgement, fully? Why, for God's sake, aren't our High Courts covered adequately? News coverage has become so one-sided that many of our so-called 'national' newspapers are rapidly losing their credibility.

Is opinion free?

As the cliche goes, news is sacred, opinion free. The 'secular' press is entitled to damn anyone in its editorial columns, but the reader is entitled to know the truth. The 90-page judgement of the Gujarat High Court received very poor coverage. If our secular press had any sense of social responsibility, it would have covered the trial and judgement in full. To its eternal shame it failed to do so. This is ducking responsibility and should be strongly condemned.

The reader does not have to be exposed to pictures of bikini-clad teenagers day after day, or to the doings of society dames at parties. What he needs is responsible journalism and that is increasingly becoming a rarity. Secular media seems bent only on spreading hatred - and not the truth. Isn't there any end to it?

What is contemporary journalism up to?
 


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