LANDMARK | Sunday, September 13, 2009 | Email | Print | 
BJP laments stab by ‘insider journalists’
PNS | New Delhi
It may still be trying to recover from the jolt dealt by insiders, but the BJP believes that it has got another problem: ‘friendly journalists’, who cannot remain ‘insider’ for too long.
An editorial in the latest issue of the party’s organ Kamal Sandesh has dwelt on the issue. It says, “There are journalists who wish that BJP should run as per their whims. Any person — journalist included — has a right to offer advice and opinion but how can it be that a political party should follow, without exception, the diktats of some journalists. If that doesn’t happen, the political organisation turns bad in their considered opinion.”
That is not the only complaint of the party. “A scenario in which journalists should turn a tool in the hands of an individual politician does not augur well for either of the two. Our effort should be to create a healthy balance in which neither the journalist is a weapon in the hands of a politician nor should the latter have to act as a shield for journalists.”
Rajya Sabha MP Prabhat Jha, who is a former journalist and editor of the party’s magazine, stops short of taking names. “This write-up is not against an individual. This is what an aam karyakarta (normal workers) of the BJP feels.”
The BJP has already made its displeasure widely known over some of the articles and TV interviews by journalists and former journalists, who had been closely associated with the party but later started behaving like an ‘independent entity’.
Jha says, “Even while working in a political party, they (friendly journalists) wish to maintain their separate identity, something special and different from the rest of the lot. An impression also gains ground among karyakartas that these people originally from journalism are senior karyakartas.”
The BJP leaders would admit that this impression is not wrong too, because they (friendly journalists) move about and communicate only with higher echelons in the leadership and not with the lower rung of political workers. “The respect and attention they get subject of envy to others,” the editorial in Kamal Sandesh reads.
The same write-up adds, “It is true that it is their duty to report but the questions remains: how, when and where. This is a matter that these wielders of the pen should ponder over. They have to ensure that in the process of the performance this onerous duty to present the ideology to the nation, mutual confidence, faith and respect does not fall a casualty.” And, the last word from the party organ: “We do understand that journalism cannot be a synonym for bosom friendship between a journalist and a politician. Yet, we have to stand firm at our respective post of duty.”
Email | Print | Rate:
|