By D N Singh
The incident on the other day when the reporter of a local channel was denied entry into the chief minister’s residence expectedly created a flutter in the media circle. Notwithstanding, what was the foundation on which the animus between the channel and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) stood, but the incident of debarring the lady reporter from reporting was not in good taste.
By saying so, it is not that this author is holding briefs for the channel but stopping the reporter from discharging her duty was painful. She was simply a reporter and not the channel’s face or owner to get into the area of political conflict or peace building.
The lady reporter on duty was not there to uphold her assumptions but was bound by objectivity while doing a coverage. Perhaps, what she was doing was waiting to report in which we can not assume that she was pre-devoted to any managerial policy there. If at all she was that could have been left to the end result not pre-dispositions.
There is no secret that the real cause behind the schism between the channel’s owner and the power-that-be is primarily for reasons in which a reporter has nothing to do except reporting what is in front of her. So, no leader or official can pre-suppose things. Neither the reporter by going there did anything amoral to get slapped with a diktat that ‘it was from the higher ups’ .
It is all about objectivity and the truth that matters. If the objective truth helps to build peace, that is fine but if the reported objective truth helps to create any violence even, so be it, as long as it is the objective truth. But there was nothing of that type with that lady reporter who only had questioned the cause behind the moratorium on her presence there.
It is not a debate about good or bad journalism, or whether journalism is moral or amoral but about simply allowing journalist to report from which ever hue she was.
