It is mendacious. When I was flipping through the pages of newspapers, what caught my attention this morning was the story on how a clinching evidence should be. This is not an academic discussion on Evidence Act. In fact, I am wrong if I claim that the story has drawn my attention. It was the other way round. My attention was drawn to the story by a friend who has a penchant for hot news in super cold weather with mercury dipping to negative: This friend of mine lives in the Windy City Chicago, Illinois.
Well, the opprobrium of the news story, if it can be called so, is against Nara Lokesh, son of N Chandrababu Naidu. The crux is an attempt to draw a comparison between the purported evidence against Mithun Reddy in the airport official’s assault case with some clumsy pictures, and crystal clear and neatly printed pictures of Nara Lokesh chilling with some of his foreign friends.
I was particularly perturbed over the way the newspaper has made an attempt to draw a parallel between two incomparable issues. The headline claims that “evidence should be like this.” What was published was not a criminal act of assault indulged in by Lokesh. These pictures had come into the public domain earlier also and the intent was clear – malign him.
It doesn’t matter if politicos indulge in mudslinging. But there is a threshold or a Lakshman Rekha, where they should stop. The politicians should understand that by stooping to personalised attacks against individuals below the belt do not augur well for them and go well with people.
Why am I blaming politicians when the story appeared was commissioned and published by a newspaper? Because there is more of a vendetta than information in the story. And, the story appeared in “Sakshi” whose political stand is open.
That a few other large media houses who make a concerted effort to blow the trumpet of the TDP wilfully at the drop of the hat and that where their allegiance lies and for what strong reasons isn’t ignorable. For even that is ignoble.
But today’s question is whether such a story against Lokesh is good in taste? What is the objective of the story? It is not trying to prove a point that Mithun Reddy was right. It is defaming Lokesh for no specific reason and that part of the story is recycled, for it is very much in public domain.
However, the Telugu Desam leadership under Chandrababu Naidu and his media coterie are the ones to blame in this episode.
They are just getting paid back on the same coin. Politics of vendetta, agitprop against its own leadership and tarnishing the image of their detractors and wryly producing stories and tucking them in news media and social media is an act that the TDP bosses and back room boys own patent for. So, after all, what goes around comes around and at times in its uglier form.
Now the YSR Congress can expect what comes in the TDP’s “neutral” media with renewed force.
Roja’s suspension from the Assembly, Chevireddy Bhaskar Reddy’s multiple arrests, and Mithun Reddy’s case do expose the ruling party’s growing intolerance. But the YSRC’s responses do not seem to follow the fundamental rule of method in madness. News has long been redefined, but it should have the basic elements. Shouldn’t these parties and their media organs introspect and take up mid-course correction?
