THUS SPOKE THE HINDU’S READERS’ EDITOR – A. S. PANNEERSELVAN..

 

Journalism, as per A. S. Panneerselvan, should respect and reflect – Impartiality, Balance, Fairness, Accuracy and Commitment to truth.

He laments that a group of readers has a way of finding theoretical explanations for their examples of bias in the newspaper.

He argues that the notion of bias get entrenched in the minds of some readers due their trusting information from social media thereby transforming them from an engaged reader to an enraged reader.

But, it is heartening to hear from A.S. Panneerselvan that as a news ombudsman, dealing with this issue of bias, has both a challenge and a learning experience.

The Hindu’s Bias Issue in reporting news item – sometimes bordering around Views of the Reporters instead of bare happenings, was raised by one regular reader – who is perhaps more an enraged reader than an engaged reader in the perception of Panneerselvan which was quoted as under:

V.N. Mukundarajan, a regular writer to the Hindu wrote thus:

“The Hindu’s editorials remain an island of balance and fairness in a vast sea of ideologically titled news, headlines, cartoons, and opinion pieces so much so that readers have almost given up talking about the Hindu’s unbiased political reported.

I have not seen a single case where the Readers’ Editor has admitted that the paper was biased in its reporting. We, long-time loyal readers, will, however, not shy away from taking up instances of egregious bias. I think it may reassure many readers, if there is an explicit message that the editorial board has a ‘mind of its own’, unlike the opinion writers who proffer one-sided views, mostly intending to show the government in poor light.”

The Biased News Reporting, Prominence being Given to Anti- Government’s Essays and Article and Cartoons - And not Publishing Counter Views Essays to give the benefits to the readers to know the other sides of the pictures, Letters to the Editor being most biased in publishing only one sided anti-establishments contents – are very much practiced by the Hindu Publishers thereby ‘Objectivity’ being crucified in the Altar of Unethical Journalism.

I had myself published a few posts drawing the attention of A. S. Panneerselvan’s failures in pointing many such instances to prove the Hindu’s Biased News.

We hope that Panneerselvan will come up to perform his role better.

SATYAMEVA JAYATHE.