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.

Ram Admits the Truth

Check out the Reader's Editor's comments today. He cites all the grievances that readers have had about the Hindu's coverage and then allows the Editor-in-Chief to explain. N.Ram appears to have admitted to many of the allegations made against the Hindu. Here are his comments:

We have an arrangement with Xinhua. We have also used western agencies and PTI. The violence reported and confirmed editorially was by Tibetan discontents, some hundreds of them. The Chinese authorities seemed unprepared at first but moved to stop the savagery in Lhasa and violence in some Tibetan areas. The riots were easily overcome. The violence in Lhasa, by every account, was by protestors, who included monks. No specific incident of violence by the police or paramilitary forces has been reported by any credible news source or eyewitnesses.

The comments in the column fail to look critically at the abundant editorialising in the guise of news. If the content in The Guardian, The New York Times, and Western news agencies is analysed, the problems of professional news reporting on the Tibet developments can be better appreciated. They were full of editorial judgments and loaded phrases and were often inaccurate (such as death toll). Their websites published wrong photographs or photographs with wrong captions. The Dalai Lama’s statements were edited because he is a separatist and tended to justify the savage and murderous riots in Lhasa. Not many letters were received other than what we published.

No particular instance is cited of an erroneous report in major foreign newspapers. While I cannot vouch for every paper, I do know that the New York Times has stringent requirements for verification of the truth of material to be published. Also what does he mean by 'No specific incident of violence by the police or paramilitary forces has been reported by any credible news source or eyewitnesses'? There have been numerous reports of peacefully protesting monks being incarcerated but then again, these are in newspapers that the Editor-in-Chief has already concluded to be biased. So has the Hindu done any original reporting from inside Tibet or reported any eyewitness accounts? None that I have seen so far. So what is the chief source of reliable news for Mr. Ram? Xinhua, the official organ of the Chinese Communist party!

The editorial policy on why no other letters were published was left unaddressed. Also I wonder what is the job of the Reader's Editor if the Editor-in-Chief decides both on news content and editorial policy? Just to read readers' comments and report to the latter?