BOGUS FREEDOMS AND OFFICIAL DECEPTION

A WIDE CANVAS

BOGUS FREEDOMS AND 
OFFICIAL DECEPTION

Most people take it for granted that our newspapers report matters correctly, and objectively. Many of them base their knowledge, not only information, on what they read in the newspapers.

I have been reading newspapers for more than 60 years.I began with the Tamil 'Dinamani' when the great A.N.Sivaraman was the editor. Then I switched to 'The Hindu' in mid-50s. As I spent my time in 7 state capitals, I had occasion to read almost all the major newspapers published in India, and get a taste of their styles. Over the years, I came to realise that there is no objective truth, as seen through the newspapers. The editors use any event or news to spin their own ideas and theories., to serve their interests.

The Hindu had a great reputation for factual reporting, never for sensationalism. It used to feel 'heavy' reading it-like reading a textbook. A.S.Raman once said that one could read The Hindu "till the cows came home". Its international coverage used to be very good, what with correspondents like K.V.Narain, K.Balaraman and Shelvankar, with G.K Reddy dispatching from the Capital. There used to be a regular column by Walter Lippmann, though later it was said that he was a spy (like that other writer on economic matters- Paul Einzig). S.K.Gurunathan's sports columns were great, even before the days of Sports &Pastime. Withal, The Hindu was a pro-establishment paper. It never used to cover opposition news on the front page. I distinctly remember Rajaji once criticised it for this very reason! (Ironically, Rajaji's son was a sub-editor or something in the paper then!) But the overall quality of the paper was dull. The editorial content was never great. (But the young boys and girls learning shorthand used to get dictation exercises based on the editorials!)

 On the contrary, The Indian Express was not a great newspaper, but Frank Moraes was a great writer and his writings used to sparkle. And it had fine journalists working for it. Girilal Jain used to write centre-page articles (what they call op-ed now) in the Times of India which were informative, but oddly, he welcomed the Emergency- saying he supported the establishment because otherwise the country would face instability. I got so angry, I stopped reading Times of India. But in a way he proved right- the ragtag coalition that was contrived in the anti-Emergency  enthusiasm could not survive its own brilliant individuals! Sham Lal of the same paper was considered to be a scholar, but I was not much impressed. The paper was run by a business group, which was accused of misusing its imported newsprint quota- it was given a quota to import 'glossy' or superior newsprint in those control days for its newspaper, but diverted it for its glamourous film magazine-Filmfare, using coarse local newsprint for its main paper! Such are the papers which pontificate on public morality!

I have two distinct memories of The Statesman of Calcutta- both mid 60s. (Delhi edition) One was concerning an ad for Cinthol soap. It featured a woman just emerging from the bathroom, with nothing on, except for a strip which ran through the ad, covering her middle portion. There was a spate of letters from readers expressing outrage that a respected paper like it could print such an ad! The other was regarding an editorial which dealt with the unruly behaviour of Calcutta corporators and the caption read: "Send these loafers out"!. Again, the readers protested, demanding how the respected paper could use such unparliamentary word like "loafer" in its editorial. The editor, I think it was Charlton, replied, saying the word meant nothing more than "idler", citing, I think, the Chambers dictionary! The paper had in 1911 opposed the shifting of the Indian Capital from Calcutta to Delhi and wrote  that  the govt was going to the city of tombs to be buried! The words came true! Delhi is verily a city of tombs, and the British had to leave India!

Such was the general standard we had. There was a certain dignity and quality in the editors, some overall  decorum, some self-observed limits, self-imposed restraint- marks of culture and decency. By far, the reporters were mature, the office staff very responsible. Even the regional papers like The Deccan Herald, The Hitavada, Nagpur Times had a national outlook.

But in the last two decades I have seen great deterioration. First, though they call themselves 'national', newspapers like The Hindu and Times of India have become chauvinist and leftist, promoting the views of only one group of people and their agenda. When The Indian Express wanted to come to Bangalore, there was great opposition from local elements, including the Deccan Herald. The Times of India opposed for long The Hindu coming to Bombay. Technology changed all this. And today, no serious reader takes any newspaper seriously- for we know their games. All newspapers suppress vital information- their reporting is slanted and less than truthful. Political correctness is more important than truth. And they survive on ad income, not truth.

But this seems to be a feature of newspapers all over the West now. Some groups are considered sacred- they cannot be criticised. eg Muslims. On the contrary, Jews are expendable. In the name of multiculturalism, minorities, deviants, etc are accorded undue respect and even grave offences by them are not taken seriously. The boundary between right and wrong is getting blurred. 

World press freedom index: the shades of green indicate greater freedom. The pink and rose ones  stand for restrictions- the darker, the harder!
ByJeffrey Ogden(W163),Spesh531[CC BY-SA3.0(http:://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0via Wikimedia Commons.

But more than this, far more serious, is the combination of the press and official power structure. Three incidents in the US in the last 50 years illustrate this effectively. Two are individual murders; one, a mass murder.

The first is the assassination of US President, John Kennedy, in November, 1963. There was an official investigation, headed by  Earl Warren,Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. It held that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in this, but did not establish his motive , beyond saying that he was affected by a life of failure and disappointment- motive enough to kill a President?  (On this basis, no head of state anywhere in the world is safe!) This sounds like typical leftist crap. Many people did not  believe it. There has been a persistent general feeling that this was due to conspiracy, and the administration itself is somehow involved- at least not above blame. Over the years the feeling has only grown.Hundreds of  books have dealt with this subject, and nearly 90% of them are agreed that the official Warren Commission did not bring out the whole truth. Warren himself was not eager to head such an investigation,  some members were not willing to join, departments of the govt were not enthusiastic about it. FBI and CIA misled the Commission: they did not disclose that they had been monitoring Oswald prior to the assassination, and FBI even had a threatening  note from him, which they had destroyed. All members of the commission did not hear all the witnesses. Warren himself did not share some vital information with other members of the commission- especially the photos of the autopsy of Kennedy. This was a crucial piece of evidence, since there were reports that bullets had hit him both from the rear and front- as his head was found jerking backward, as against the officially accepted 'single bullet' theory.There was obviously more than one shooter. 4 members of the Commission and Robert Kennedy himself expressed their doubts about the Commission's conclusions.

Earl Warren presenting his report to President Lyndon Johnson.
Public  domain, Wikimedia Commons.

The next is the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy, brother of the former President, in June 1968. Here too circumstances suggest that more than personal causes was involved: as Attorney General, he had rubbed many powerful lobbies  and was championing causes that were not to the liking of powerful groups. Here too, people are not satisfied with the official investigation and its conclusion. Over the years, many new facts have surfaced, raising ever more questions.

Robert Kennedy campaigning.

But perhaps the gravest of all is the 9/11 affair. The Bush Administration neatly related it to Muslim extremism , Al Queda and Osama Bin Laden. But today, no one believes seriously that two commercial air planes could have caused the two WTC towers to collapse in the manner they did. The precise manner they collapsed- the very physics of it- suggests that something more was involved.It looks more like a controlled demolition. They fell so neatly, so fast, all debris inside the huge steel structure! As if they were designed to collapse in that very manner. No other sky scraper in history has been affected by fire in such a manner, even after burning for long hours.. Engineers with long experience have questioned how the lighter upper floors, which caught fire, could have caused the heavy lower floors, which were not on fire, to collapse as if on order. They hold that the buildings could not have collapsed so fast without additional explosives stored in the buildings themselves, and that the heat generated by the fire caused by the aircraft fuel would not have been sufficient to melt all that steel. The more govt. agencies try to explain, the more holes are found in their arguments, so that now the govt depts. refuse to react to criticism! 

September11 photo montage.
BY UpstateNYer [CC BY-SA3.0] Creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.

It is no secret that President Bush delayed the ordering of the investigation by 411 days- long enough for  the material evidence to be obliterated or altered. And he obstructed the investigations by limiting the funding, limiting access to documentation, by limiting interviews under oath and numerous other ways. More and more people from the various agencies, as they retire and come out, are voicing their doubts about the investigation.Some whistle blowers have died under doubtful circumstances.

 That such things could happen in the US which is regarded as a champion of freedom is just awful. There too we find  decent, educated people willing to go with official lies and half truths. But the leading newspapers too are keeping studied silence. It is as if they have joined the officials in their lie- or have been silenced by power or money. In serious matters, the newspapers have become simply unreliable.

We can understand this. Man Mohan Singh as PM used to travel with a large contingent of chamcha newspaper people, all entertained  with tax payers' money, and they used to ensure his image as a 'great economist' or 'economic expert' by their writing and coverage, though the poor man never once talked anything serious or sensible about the economy! PM Modi is keeping the presswallas at a distance, and he is getting  negative coverage in the English language press! I know something about how press-meets are arranged. Where booze and presents do not flow, there the newsmen will not flock. This is press freedom in practice.

The net result is that through all the newspapers, the electronic media, social networks, etc, one simply is not sure what is the truth of anything.

We saw this in some local situations- how the regional language newspapers report. When the Sankaracharya of Kanchi, Sri Jayendra Sarswati was implicated in a murder case and arrested, the Tamil language press had a festival time, attacking anything Hindu, especially Smartha brahmin. They even  wrote that  the Swami had kept a plane or helicopter ready to escape to Nepal! The police dept itself released select material to chosen news media to prejudice public mind. And the lawyers associations opposed the application for bail itself! Apart from 'Cho', no one had the courage or decency to question such type of frenzy, affecting the rights of an individual. And Cho had the courage to start a serial on Hinduism in his paper, 'Tughlaq' at that very time!

We are seeing such trial by the press in almost every case now. They are bringing in all extraneous considerations to vitiate the public mind. It is well to remember in this connection that in the Kennedy assassination case, one Jack Ruby could gain easy access to where the Police was transferring the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to prison and just shoot him. The Warren commission held the press behaviour irresponsible, and blamed police inefficiency for having yielded to press influence. We also know how in the case of Princess Diana, her death in accident was caused by the chasing paparazzi. These are just two instances to show that the so called free press is not there to safeguard our freedom, but to serve their own interests, even by invading our freedom and privacy. Freedom is just an excuse.