(S.R.Seshu)
Journalism demands some decency from editors and journalists. Many a time, newspapers don’t display minimum decency and Sakshi newspaper’s web edition has provided us the latest example.
The humiliating defeat by a second-string Indian Cricket side for the second time in three days in the one-day international series left Zimbabwe interim coach, Makhaya Ntini, fuming and fretting. He was so frustrated with the defeat that he wanted to commit suicide!
“I almost hanged myself. If there was a tomato tree outside I would have hanged myself in that tomato tree,” the South African fast bowler told reporters bursting forth his pent up anger and frustration.
A journalist working on Sakshi newspaper website rightly sensed a story in it. He/she translated Makhaya Ntini statement with an introduction that states that ‘sometimes defeat would generate a feeling of committing suicide.’ We don’t know whether it is true in everyone’s case.
The journalist gave a highly objectionable pictorial presentation to this story. Taking Ntini’s words in literal sense, he/she published a tomato tree (because this coach wants to hang himself to this particular tree) along with an insertion of coach’s passport photo.
Had he wanted to hang himself to a rose plant or jump from a building, the journalist would have published the photographs of a rose plant and a building! This is a very poor cum indecent taste, Sir.
