B.G. Verghese’s excellent biography “Warrior of the
Fourth Estate: Ramnath Goenka of the Express” charts the turbulent course of
Ramnath Goenka’s life, from his modest beginnings to his building of the vast
‘Indian Express’ empire with its multiple editions. Unlike the servile peers
who crawled when asked to bend, Express’ founder himself took part in Gandhi’s
march from Champaran and led the protest against the Anti-defamation Bill. The
paper backed Jayaprakash Narayan’s Bihar
movement, fought against the Emergency regime of Indira Gandhi, against Rajiv
Gandhi for Anti-defamation Bill and slimy corporate chiefs. He struggled to
protect three basic values of human beings and continued to fight till his last
breath. He became a living source of right inspiration to the world of
journalism. His son B.D.Goenka often compared RNG’s values with modern
journalists: who by and large are making the noble profession of journalism as
Profession of Black Mail and Extortion. In an article of tribute to RNG his
daughter-in-law Saroj Goenka says her personal study at grass root levels
reveals that most of the people were afraid of journalists and did not want to
keep contacts with them. Some of the people had compared the friendship of
journalist with that of police who could put you in tight corner anytime at any
place and anywhere. That is the
degeneration of this profession. RNG’s three fundamental values were
Fearlessness, Honesty and Truthfulness in reporting, sometimes at the risk of
closure of his company. It is because of these fundamental values that he
cherished that the Indian Express, during his days, had never to back out from
its stories and exposures.
It is two of these three values close to RNG’s
heart – Honesty and Truthfulness that have been mortgaged by his grandson Manoj
Sontholia who owns The New Indian Express (TNIE), the divided property of IE Group
based in Chennai, Madurai
and 20 other editions in South and Orissa. It also has the Tamil newspaper ‘Dinamani’.
During the days of RNG, the IE Chennai boasted of veteran editors like Frank
Moraes and Dinamani like Chockalingam, A.N.Sivaraman, Iravatham Mahadevan et
al. But now the degenerated TNIE chose to hire a rabid communalist and yellow
journalist Aditya Sinha as its Editor under whom Hindu chauvinists like S.Gurumurthy
and Francois Gautier and others were reeling out communal and anti-minority
venom. For the Tamil daily ‘Dinamani’ Sontholia hired K.Vaidyanathan, a known
RSS and casteist element who lent pages to all and sundry Kalaignar and DMK baiters.
Both papers were converted into mouthpieces and sycophants of their natural
ally, the fascist, anti-people and communal Jayalalitha. The advertisement for
Dinamani is made in only one TV channel, Jaya TV owned by her, making no bones
about their affinity.
When Aditya Sinha left the paper in January last he
did not leave any message to its readers but wrote a sarcastic column boasting
about his ‘contribution’ to the daily found by the doyen R.N.Goenka. ‘The
Rising Sun’ in its issue dated January 23, 2011 published a rejoinder under the
title, ‘Mr Sinha, Except Jaya nobody will miss you here’, which is worth and
relevant recollecting now:
Dear Mr.
Aditya Sinha,
Apropos
your farewell piece titled ‘Mr.Kalaignar, I will miss you’, in The New
Indian Express on January 9.
Indeed it
must be your Pongal gift to the seasoned readers of The Indian Express
(new or old), who by custom were still unable to give up the daily in spite of
the absurdity to which you reduced, during your four-year stint as
Editor-in-Chief, the newspaper found and nurtured by the indomitable doyen of
journalism, Ramnath Goenka. They will certainly take off their spectacles and
rub their eyes in disbelief. On confirming your going, the first thing they
would have done was to have called over phones, their friends-
past-fellow-readers of the daily and conveyed the happy news. However, the
latter, whom you assiduously drove away from readership will be doubly cautious
and ascertains the mental make up of your successor Prabhu Chawla given the
fact that Gurumurthys are still around heavily polluting the decades-old daily.
Usually
when editors leave one journal, he/she will recount his/her experience with the
journal concerned and the socio-political and economic condition of the area/
state of its publication etc., But the very last scribble you got published on
the day of your leaving The New Indian Express amply suggest the
‘mission’ with which you landed in Chennai in the month of April 2007 – ‘Kalaignar-bashing
and Jayalalitha-eulogizing.’ You vomited reels of venom against Kalaignar and
his family members under your column ‘reductio ad absurdum’ not bording on but
invading into yellow journalism that your counterpart in your
sister-publication Tamil daily ‘Dinamani’, K.Vaidyanathan who zealously publish
translated versions of articles appearing in The New Indian Express,
dared not to get your write-ups translated into Tamil and publish in his
newspaper. Equally, or perhaps more anti-Kalaignar and pro-Jayalalitha,
Vaidyanathan himself could not put up with the stench of your pen!
It is no
wonder that you also like any other yellow-journalist have some fans one of
whom has written “It is you who introduced a different and bold type of
writing. May be your American exposure helped you in this regard.” (You spent
most of your childhoold and adolescence abroad, explaining why you don’t suit
Tamilian culture, or Indian for that reason) There are people here who think
everything Yankee is great. Possibly this reader thinks all American
journalists are like Julian Assange of Wikileaks. They don’t know the nature of
‘bold’ popular political discourse of that land of immigrants – oral sex
encounters of former US President Bill Clinton with his aide Monica Lewinksky,
the breasts and nipples through the cleavages of Republican Vice-Presidential
candidate Sarah Polin during her election campaign… etc., Having grown and
cultivated in such atmosphere, it is no surprise that you too belong to that
breed. And hence, your scribblings were not worthy of responding.
While you
almost monopolized in you columns, Kalaignar-baiting, you also allowed waywards
like Gnani (he should have got his Tamil writings translated into English) too
share the task. Likes of Gurumurthy and Francois Gautier to spew Hindu communal
venom and tirade against minorities, much against the secular and democratic
credential of the founder Ramnath Goenka. Your counterpart in Dinamani takes
the editorial columns for Kalaignar-baiting and engages all and sundry for
mudslinging articles.
When you
joined the assignment in The New Indian Express you declared, “My role
will include revamping the newspaper and giving it a clear editorial direction.
The New Indian Express should ultimately become the foremost information
provider for the readers.” At the end of your tenure, you can derive the
satisfaction of having given “the clear editorial direction” to your
colleagues, whom, according to your own confession in your last write-up,
“produced a paper that made you (Kalaignar) look bad” – Your mission fulfilled!
But what Goenka’s child lost was objectivity and ethics. You ‘provided’ your
readers your subjective desires and made The New Indian Express ‘the
foremost’ disinformation provider. A sample for the ethics of journalism you
have indoctrined for your colleagues is given below.
You were
fortunate in having come to Chennai four years ago when the aura of press
freedom and democracy was in full bloom under Kalaignar’s democratic rule. If
you had arrived earlier during Jayalalitha authoritarian regime and wrote
against her as you now did against Kalaignar, your house and daily office
premises would have been raided, you would have been booked under POTA (after
the police ‘seize’ a gun from your car) and lodged in jail for 18 months at
least, summons would have been issued to you by the Speaker to appear in the
Assembly and get into the box, you might have absconded to avoid the summons,
loiter around in other states away from your home and ultimately return after you
get a ‘bail’ from the Supreme Court (you can still contact K.P.Sunil, now
working for Jaya TV, for his harrowing experiences), goons from others states
would have been engaged to throw acid on your face while you drive home from
your office, you would have been attacked with boulders breaking your legs or
with knives chopping off your fingers, one of your teenage son or some other
relative might have been booked under Narcotics Act for alleged possession of
ganja or cocaine and posters displayed around your newspaper office, at least
one defamation case everyday would have been filed against your daily,
government advertisements would have been stopped until you fall in line with
the regime (unlike now under DMK rule, both The New Indian Express and
Dinamani getting regular ads in spite of their hostile attitude)... etc.,
Moreover,
the proof of pudding is in the eating. You must have verified with the
Circulation Manager or come to a petty shop and find out the sale ‘prospects’
of the The New Indian Express and weigh your ‘contribution’ to the
daily. The difficulty faced by your management in disbursing monthly salaries
to staff is well known in journalist circles in the city.
Why should
you unnecessarily drag the name of your owner Manoj Sonthalia while you leave
the organization, to boast about your ‘heroics’. You are a Cooum-bred mosquito
for the colossus, Kalaignar to ‘muzzle’ you by pressurizing Sonthalia. He was
invited for inaugurating the Express Mall by Tmt. Saroj Goenka and Tmt. Kavita
Singhania, which he decently agreed and obliged without placing any condition.
(Manoj Sonthalia himself participated in a function for the release of a book
on M.K.Stalin and lavishly praised Kalaignar and Stalin). Had it been your
favourite lady’s regime, they would have been coerced to shell out 15 percent
stake or hefty sum for the project to come up.
Lastly,
everything was amiss in your writings. Let your family pray for better sense to
prevail over you in your new assignment. Nobody except Jayalalitha will miss
you here. Adieu!
In the same issue, The Rising Sun also exposed the
unfounded canards widely published by the daily against the DMK government and
how the rejoinders nailing its reports by Kalaignar were relegated to obscure
corners in single columns against all ethics of journalism.
But the change in Editor has not brought about any
change in its avowed editorial policy of the daily viz., Anti DMK and Kalaignar
and pro Jayalalitha. As the Assembly elections approached, TNIE and Dinamani
were virtually converted into mouthpieces of the ADMK and carried out hectic
campaign for the defeat of the DMK alliance if not for the victory of the ADMK
alliance.
But even after the polling for the Assembly
elections were over on April 13, the irresistible itching to discredit the DMK,
of these two dailies has not subsided. Kalaignar has on April 22, immediately
after the dailies published widely on April 21 an unfounded story on allocation
of some land to Tata Realty and Infrastructure Limited, as if it was a new
exposure of the misdeed of the DMK government. This matter was raised by the
ADMK in the Assembly on 11.5.2010 and Deputy Chief Minister Thiru M.K.Stalin
gave a detailed reply refuting the allegations. These proceedings of the
Assembly were published in these two dailies also like others on 12.5.2010. Yet
neither the Editors or anyone in the editorial boards had the basic sense of
duty of journalists to verify their own records if not the veracity of the
allegation, and published it as if it was a new exposure. This was another
instance of their itch to spread canards to discredit the DMK. But again even
while publishing the CM’s rejoinder to their reports in an obscure manner the
dailies still maintained that “But he (Kalaignar) was silent over how land
earmarked for an institution (IIT) was given away.”, thereby exposing their
half-baked knowledge.
Kalaignar did not spare them and immediately gave
the rejoinder stating that in the very first para of the reports of TNIE and
Dinamani, it was said that the TN government unilaterally acquired over 40
acres of land at Taramani standing in the name of IIT in the year 1993. In that
year it was Jayalalitha, commanding the full support of the dailies who were in
power. So, TNIE and Dinamani should pose the question to the ADMK leadership.”
It cannot be assumed that everyone working in the editorial desks of the two
dailies was so insane to commit such glaring blunder. But this is a classic
example for how blind antipathy for the DMK dictated from above, makes an ass
of every ‘learned’ journalist working for their dailies.
Will not Ramnath Goenka, who held the values of
Honesty and Truthfulness close to his heart, turn over in his grave on such a
degeneration of the dailies found by him?
But those two dailies alone are not of this kind
folly. Other English dailies like Deccan Chronicle and The Times of India,
Tamil dailies like Dinamalar, periodicals like Anantha Vikatan and Junior
Vikatan – leaving aside host of trivial ones – fall in the same category.
Have they all forgotten and forgive the media
witchhunt launched during Jayalalitha regimes: filing of over 100 defamation
cases against dailies, police raid in the office of ‘The Hindu’ and searches at
the residences of its senior journalist and a lady reporter, arrest of ‘Nakkheeran’
editor R.R. Gopal under POTA and jailing him for 18 months, cases and arrest
warrant against Indian Express journalist S.Gurumurthy that he had to stay
outside the state and returned only after getting a stay in Supreme Court, a
similar fate on journalist K.P.Sunil for his column in a periodical etc., If
they have forgiven Jayalalitha for all these vindictive actions against the
media, ethically and morally they owe explanations to their readers.
The day for the people of the State teaching
fitting lessons to them are not far off!
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