Views(News) Papers

The cartoon that you see here appeared in Deccan Chronicle newspaper today. I found it hilarious and relevant for Natwar's stance until yesterday. I hope you are aware that he finally decided to resign from the union cabinet.

Reference to Deccan Chronicle reminds of the topic that I thought of blogging sometime ago. Although the content of today’s blog would make more sense to people who read Telugu newspapers, I am sure what I am going to refer is not an isolated issue relevant to only newspapers in Andhra Pradesh.

Everyday, I eat my breakfast at a guest house located next to my office, where I get to read almost every newspaper published in AP, like Eenadu, Andhra Jyoti, Vaarta, The Hindu, Times of India, Deccan Chronicle. Skimming through these newspapers on a daily basis has made me understand how the newspapers can influence the perspective that you would form about something. I will explain this with an example.

The present Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Y.S.Rajasekhar Reddy was quite famous earlier as a dissident, someone who always had something to complain about the Chief Ministers; even during the Congress rule. He used to write multiple letters to the Chief Ministers on various issues criticizing their stance. Kotla Vijayabhaskar Reddy, Mysoora Reddy(now in TDP), P Janardhan Reddy are some of his arch rivals in congress party. Way back in early nineties, when Kotla was the CM of AP and P.V.Narasimha Rao was the PM, they held a meeting at Cuddapah, which is YSR's bastion. Both the CM and PM were humiliated when footwear was thrown on them during the meeting. Apparently this humiliation was planned by YSR.

Recently, a meeting was held in the state Congress head quarters where all the senior leaders of Congress assembled to discuss release of water from a particular reservoir called "Pothireddypadu" to Rayalaseema area of AP. This issue has been on bone of contention, with leaders of difference areas taking sides whether to release water or not, with lot of exchange of words and huge media coverage. The meeting was arranged to discuss the issue and arrive at a consensus. One of the points that came for discussion was congress leaders calling for press meets to inform their stance about the issue. When this point was raised, P Janardana Reddy, MLA of Khairatabad constituency in Hyderabad retorted by asking what is wrong with that. He didn't stop with that; he asked if it is worse than humiliating CM and PM by throwing footwear at them. He also reminded about how YSR used to write letters to Congress Chief Ministers expressing his discontent.

Ideally, all the newspapers should have given a similar kind of coverage for this news item. I will let you know how this has been covered by different newspapers and how it could influence our thinking.

Eenadu - Reported on the front page as main news with big font and red letters - Heading was "is it worse than arranging to throw chappals.....?” This isn't a surprise; we know Ramoji Rao doesn't like congress.
Andhra Jyoti - Reported on the front page as main news with big font and red letters - Heading was "I know I would be made a scapegoat for saying this...." No wonder, the grapevine says that Chandrababu Naidu funded Rs.20 crores to revive Andhra Jyoti.
Vaarta - Reported in the third page in the state news, with not much importance to the comments made by Janardana Reddy. By the way Girish Sanghi who owns Vaarta is a congress MP.
Deccan Chronicle - Same as above. T Venkatrami Reddy is a congress MP.

Similarly, about the summons issued to Chandrababu Naidu in IMG land allotment case, the reporting pattern was vice versa, that is Vaarta and DC giving more importance while Eenadu and Andhra Jyoti extenuating the same.

Having read so many newspapers about the same news item, I could form my own perspective, trying to strike a balance as to the news item's importance, but for a layman who reads one newspaper and doesn't have access to many this may not be the case. He will get carried away by the way information is thrust upon him, which could result in forming wrong and biased opinions.

Unfortunately, newspaper are not reporting news anymore, they are forcing opinions on us.