Sunday, January 04, 2015

The Hindu

There are many in Chennai who are 'addicted' to The Hindu and treat any developments in or to The Hindu as personally significant. Such readers are now unpleasantly intrigued by what is happening in the still developing story of Rahul Panditha's exit from the newspaper.

Rahul Panditha  was till recently the OP-ED editor of The Hindu. A renowned journalist, he was deemed a prize catch for the newspaper in March, 2014. Last week, he resigned and placed his resignation letter in the public domain. He was offended by the Editor Malini Parthasarathy's micro-management practices which he termed as illogical and stumbling blocks to journalists. His exit follows, though not in a connected way, those of Siddarth Varadarajan, P.Sainath and Praveen Swamy. (Readers are wondering when Suhasini Haidar will depart!)

The Hindu has not reported the details of Panditha's abrupt resignation. It is not expected to report either. But it has published a letter from CRPF IG questioning the veracity of various reports filed by Panditha. The newspaper has also regretted "any inaccuracies" in the reports. Panditha wonders in the social media why the newspaper did not consult him on inaccuracies if any.

In this situation, it was perplexing to hear N.Ram expound the concept of 'Freedom of the Press' at Srinivasa Sastry Hall, Mylapore on 3rd inst.

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