The Readers' Editor Writes on The Hindu's Coverage L-affaire Gopalaswamy

Today's opinion by the Readers' Editor is reasonably well written. It points out the one-sided coverage of the paper on the CEC v. EC controversy. 

Mr.Ram defends the one-sided coverage as 'value judgment' and having nothing to do with fairness. It is true that newspapers seldom entertain the entire range of views on any subject - at some point, the editor must decide what to publish and what to exclude - but it is stupid for a newspaper claiming to be more than a mouthpiece of a particular party to insist that value judgment has nothing to do with fairness. Where an alternative perspective is equally plausible as in this case and many eminent writers indeed made a well-argued case for a contrasting view, the liberal idea of viewpoint diversity and the compelling nature of counterarguments very much warranted their publication. To claim otherwise may be within the editor's discretion but it suggests an illiberal mindset and a cloistered worldview. If those indeed are the values the chief editor espouses, they reflect poorly on his newspaper.

The Reader's Editor says that he is told that the letters that appear in the paper represent a fair proportion of letters received. I have no statistics to disprove this but having carefully observed the sort of letters that get published, I am strongly inclined to look at such a claim as nothing short of facetious. The majority of published letters are laudatory and only the last one or two in a long list happen to be modestly critical. It is quite inconceivable that every editorial position always receives a favorable response in the very same proportion.

Contrary to all available evidence, chindu blames the victim

Chindu indulging in the usual secular game of blaming the victim as the aggressor. This time, the victim is not just a second-class Hindu citizen but an irritant to the dynasty. On the other hand, Navin Chawla is a Congress sycophant and has never been shy of displaying his loyalty, much like Chindu.

Gopalaswami’s claims on timing of missive are seriously misleading

A careful, item-by-item verification by The Hindu of the CEC’s claims on what happened within the Election Commission between January 30, 2008 and January 12, 2009 reveals that they are seriously misleading.
The documentary record shows that he relentlessly hounded an Election Commissioner...

Read anything but the chindu to get the true picture.

Arun points out the following articles on Rediff:

Chawla's loo breaks led to Congress phone calls: CEC

In the report to the President, the CEC notes that whenever the full bench meeting was seized of an issue, Chawla will make an excuse of going to the washroom. And soon thereafter, invariably, the CEC would get phone calls from top Congress functionaries even as the meeting was in progress.

Unfair to impute motives to CEC
Chawla was also found to have exercised 'extra-statutory control in jail matters', including 'the treatment of detenues'. Not confining himself to dictating to his boss as to the persons to be arrested, he also prescribed how they were to be treated in prison. For instance, he was for constructing special cells with asbestos roofs to 'bake' certain prisoners. Kishan Chand pathetically admitted to Justice Shah that he was not a free agent and Chawla used to receive instructions directly from Sanjay Gandhi and he (Kishan Chand) came into the picture only to the extent that he was required to fulfill some technical formalities.

Daily Pioneer has gone on to suggest Why Chawla must go.