The incident has brought the independence and integrity of several media houses under a cloud
The fracas between Chhattisgarh and Noida Police over detention of a news channel anchor is not a healthy development. The arrest preceded high drama at the anchor’s house in Ghaziabad’s Indirapuram on Tuesday morning. The Chhattisgarh Police had come to arrest him with a warrant for his alleged role in doctoring a video of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. The doctored video allegedly made it appear that Gandhi indirectly condoned the gruesome murder of the Udaipur tailor by a couple of jihadists. Around 6.15 am, the anchor reached out to the Uttar Pradesh Police and Government, including Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, through a SoS tweet, saying Chhattisgarh cops had reached his residence to arrest him without informing the local police. That brought Noida Police on the scene. Meanwhile, the news channel has distanced itself from the doctored video. It claimed in a police complaint that the faux pas happened “due to oversight and inadvertence”. The company claimed that two employees have been dismissed. “In the given circumstances, the company has reasonable belief and suspicion that the aforesaid negligence and dereliction of duties may have been committed by (the producers) knowingly and intentionally in connivance with each other,” the company said in its police complaint. Only a probe can bring out the truth, but the incident has given voice to sceptics who are increasingly questioning the independence and integrity of several media houses. There is nothing wrong in taking a political stand on issues, but when a media organisation — or some of its journalists — is seen as promoting the interests of a party, it ceases to be journalism; it becomes politicking, with all the attendant consequences. This episode should be seen as a lesson to the entire media: Nobody is outside the jurisdiction of the law of karma.
The political class should also realise that if cops are stopped or harassed when they are probing an interstate matter, the enforcement of law will be adversely affected. This happened in May in the case against BJP leader Tajinder Bagga. The Punjab Police wanted to arrest him for his “provocative statements and promoting religious enmity”, but Delhi and Haryana police foiled the attempt. His tweets had targeted Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party boss Arvind Kejriwal. According to the Punjab Police, he was an offender who should be arrested, but this view was not shared by the police of Delhi and Haryana. Evidently, cops’ understanding of the law did not correspond with what is written in statute books but to the interests of the politicians they report to. This is not the rule of law; this is the rule of men and women who occupy political offices. In effect, it becomes the tyranny of arbitrariness, hurting all sooner or later. When editorialists bemoan it, they are often ridiculed as dreamy moralists. But the law of karma also catches up with cynics, including journalists and politicians.
