ANUJ SRIVAS - Hindustan Times Editor’s Exit Preceded by Meeting Between Modi, Newspaper Owner
'The Government is committed to the freedom of the Press': DG, Press Information Bureau
NB: That's good to hear! I suppose the reports below are false? Products of inebriated minds? DS
Over the past year, a number of instances
have emerged highlighting the inappropriate relationship
between editors in organisations like the Times of India and Dainik Jagran and the ruling
party and /or government officials. Stories deemed embarrassing to the BJP have been taken down with
no explanation offered to readers. An op-ed article critical of
the government’s handling of China was taken down
from HT’s website in July 2017 - criticism on social media led to
it being restored.
New Delhi: Hindustan Times (HT) proprietor Shobhana
Bhartia’s decision to announce the abrupt exit of Bobby Ghosh as
editor was preceded by a personal meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and
objections raised by top-level government and Bharatiya Janata Party officials
to editorial decisions taken during Ghosh’s tenure. The government
insists the meeting was “confined to” Bhartia’s efforts to secure Modi’s
participation in a flagship HT event. But sources in the newspaper say that in
the run-up to that meeting, she faced sustained objections from senior
ministers to aspects of HT’s political coverage, to Ghosh’s own
views expressed on social media, and to the fact that he does not
hold Indian citizenship. One of these minsters had even hinted at escalating
matters to Modi. Ghosh, a journalist
and editor with extensive worldwide experience, joined HT in May 2016 after
successfully running Quartz and TIME magazine. His
16-month stint is widely seen as having perked up the 90-year-old
newspaper, even if some of his editorial initiatives – notably the ‘Hate
Tracker’ – have rubbed the BJP-led political establishment the wrong way.
His departure from HT
was announced by Bhartia on September 11. The fact that Bhartia’s statement did
not say Ghosh had resigned, but that he would “be returning to New York
for personal reasons” – and that Ghosh has made no public statement of his own
– is seen as a sign within the organisation that his exit was forced.
The Wire mailed a detailed questionnaire to Nripendra Misra, principal secretary to the prime minister, seeking confirmation of the Modi-Bhartia meeting and asking whether it was correct, as sources within the newspaper had claimed, that Modi raised Ghosh’s citizenship and even suggested the HT should not have him as its editor. Similar questions were put to Bhartia. Ghosh, who is set to return to the US in early November, declined to comment.
The Wire mailed a detailed questionnaire to Nripendra Misra, principal secretary to the prime minister, seeking confirmation of the Modi-Bhartia meeting and asking whether it was correct, as sources within the newspaper had claimed, that Modi raised Ghosh’s citizenship and even suggested the HT should not have him as its editor. Similar questions were put to Bhartia. Ghosh, who is set to return to the US in early November, declined to comment.
‘Baseless
insinuations’: Misra sent in a
response via Frank Noronha, principal director general of the Press Information
Bureau of the Government of India, confirming the meeting but terming as
“baseless” the suggestion that the prime minister might have sought
Ghosh’s removal:
This is with reference
to your e-mail dated September 18, 2017 to the Principal Secretary to the Prime
Minister, Shri Nripendra Mishra on the subject mentioned by you “Questions
about Prime Minister Modi’s recent meeting with HT proprietor Shobhana
Bhartia“.
In this regard, I wish
to inform that Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi met HT proprietor, Ms.
Shobhana Bhartia recently. The discussion between the two was only
confined to forthcoming HT event – ‘Hindustan Times Leadership Summit’.
Ms. Shobhana Bhartia extended invitation to the Prime Minister for
participation.
Other related assumptions
and insinuations in your email of September 18, 2017 are baseless and denied. The Government is
committed to the freedom of the Press.
Bhartia did not reply
to The Wire‘s queries. Instead, Dinesh Mittal, HT general counsel,
sent a brief response in which he chose not to disclose the fact that
Bhartia and Modi had even met but denied that the newspaper had acted
under pressure:
Bobby Ghosh has
decided to leave for personal reasons. No external party, and that includes the
government, the PM or any member of the government, has had any say or
influence in the matter. Using circumstantial information to support your story
is undesirable & unwarranted.
Notwithstanding these
denials, sources say the editor’s citizenship did come up for
discussion in the Modi-Bhartia meeting.
Citizenship as
convenient alibi? : Multiple sources
within HT confirmed that Bhartia had been fending off pressure for some time –
including from ministers – over Ghosh’s editorial leadership. Arguments over
his citizenship also took place, though this issue was seen inside the
organisation as a red herring. Objecting to Ghosh because of his passport could
arguably be sold as ‘nationalism’ whereas directly targeting his
editorial direction would be seen as an attack on media freedom.
As proprietor,
Bhartia was aware that the law does not specify that the editor of a
newspaper must be an Indian citizen. Company lawyers confirmed this when Ghosh
was hired after an international search involving a leading headhunting firm.
In 2013, the Delhi high court dismissed a petition filed by BJP leader
Subramanian Swamy seeking removal of The Hindu’s erstwhile editor,
Siddharth Varadarajan (now one of the founding editors of The Wire), on the
grounds that he had a US passport.
Senior
staff within HT who raised this point with Bhartia and her advisers were
told, “It is one thing for The Hindu to have defended
Siddharth Varadarajan when he came under attack from Swamy. What does one do if
the [highest levels of government] make this an issue?”
Swamy’s arguments were
rejected by the court, which indicated that the existing wording of the
law was clear. The law in this case is the Press and Registration of Books
(PRB) Act. The bench noted that while the pending Press and
Registration of Books and Publication Bill 2011 suggested defining the term
‘editor’ as a person who is a citizen of India, it was “not for the court to
legislate”. In
fact, amendments to the PRB Act have been pending since
2011, and Modi has not moved parliament to amend the law. The Wire’s query
to information and broadcasting minister Smriti Irani on the government’s stand
on amending the PRB Act has not been answered till the time of publication.
Little love
for hate tracker: Meanwhile, in the
first concrete indication of a shift in editorial direction following Ghosh’s
exit, HT appears to be distancing itself from the newspaper’s ‘Hate
Tracker’. On July 28, 2017, HT
launched its ‘Hate Tracker’ –
a “national database on crimes in the name of religion, caste race.” As a
separate microsite, the hate tracker was intended to be “a crowd-sourced
database of hate crimes in India since September 2015”... read more:
