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| Early Times being harassed for fearless reporting | | DIRECT, MINCING NO WORDS | |
NEHA
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Dec 9: The National Conference-led government has been harassing the Early Times for quite sometime now. Earlier, it had banned this daily, which has become the voice of the nation in general and of the deprived sections of society in the state in particular. It had to lift the ban and allow the management to resume its publication sooner than later because of pressure from below. It had banned the paper for publishing a report which had also been published in a number of other Jammu-based dailies. That it had banned your newspaper and not the others was a clear proof of its vindictive attitude. The ban on your paper only reminded the management of those emergency days when the persons at the helm in Delhi had done all that they could to teach the Indian Express management a lesson. The Indian Express had become an eyesore because of its investigative journalism, as also because of its fearless reporting.
Did the authorities succeed in gagging the media? Yes, it did succeed for a while. The war-like restriction on the fourth estate didn’t deter the press. Instead, it persevered and continued its campaign against the wrongdoings; it went on exposing the official wrongs and the result was that a party, which was the country’s premier political organization, had to suffer a humiliating defeat in 1977. The most notable aspect of the whole situation was that even the then Prime Minister had to suffer a defeat at the hands of her little known rival. Convinced that the negative attitude towards the fourth estate had only harmed the long-term interests of the country’s premier political organization and only invited criticism from the ever-alert judiciary, the party bosses and their media managers changed their attitude. It was a good development. In fact, it was the victory of the free press over that section of political class that had gagged the press to hide its failures and wrongs it had committed. Ever since then, the press has been enjoying full freedom and discharging its obligations towards the nation by educating public opinion and focusing on issues of public, national and international import. In fact, it is the Press that is setting the agenda in the country these days.
But here is a government in Jammu and Kashmir that has refused to learn any lesson from what the nation did in 1977 to those who had sought to harass the Press. It has adopted a vindictive attitude towards that section of the media that reports fearlessly and that believes that it is its fundamental duty to report, comment, educate public opinion and focus on the issues of great import. Your Early Times falls under that category. And, it is because of this that its management is being harassed. It is being denied advertisements. It has adopted a policy that discriminates between one section of the press and the other. The result has been that your newspaper has suffered huge financial losses.
It is, however, a different matter that the management of your paper has decided to resist the official onslaught and forge ahead. At the same time, your paper deems it most appropriate to place on record its deep gratitude to those who have come forward to stand by the management of the Early Times at this critical juncture. The management holds out a categorical commitment that it would not let down its esteemed readers and continue to discharge its obligations weathering all odds, including the official vindictive attitude. Our strength is our esteemed readers and we depend on them.
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