Letters to the Hoot: Suroor omits and Sardersai patronises
Two letters on how the Hindu reported Assange’s public debate, and how CNN IBN treated Khushboo on a panel discussion.
From S KRISHNA KUMAR and NARAYANAN SURESH.
The April 11 issue of The Hindu carried a report on a public debate attended by Julian Assange. During the debate Julian heaped praise on The Hindu, said the report. Hasan's report was quite eulogistic about Assange. But a report by The Guardian presents a different picture. The Guardian adds what The Hindu has left out of its report.
Here is what The Guardian adds…
'But the political commentator Douglas Murray, director of the centre for social cohesion, challenged Assange over the website’s sources of funding, its staffing and connections with the Holocaust denier Israel Shamir, who has worked with the site.
“What gives you the right to decide what should be known or not? Governments are elected. You, Mr Assange are not.”
Murray also challenged the WikiLeaks founder over an account in a book by Guardian writers David Leigh and Luke Harding, in which the authors quote him suggesting that if informants were to be killed following publication of the leaks, they “had it coming to them”.
Assange repeated an earlier assertion that the website “is in the process of suing the Guardian” over the assertion, and asked if Murray would like to “join the queue” of organisations he was suing.
The Guardian has not received any notification of such action from WikiLeaks or its lawyers.
Jason Cowley, the editor of the New Statesman and chair of the debate, interjected to ask: “How can the great champion of open society be using our libel laws to challenge the press?”
Here is a link to the report
I keyed in a comment at The Hindu’s website saying it was unethical on the part of The Hindu to leave out the parts of debate unpalatable to it. As could be expected my comment was censored.
S. Krishna Kumar
Thiruvananthapuram
April 12, 2011
The Hoot’s editor responds: It is not entirely correct to say that Hasan Suroor left this out of his report, though he was terse about it. Here is what he said at the end:
During the debate, “This house believes whistleblowers make the world a safer place,” Mr. Assange was challenged about his website's source of funding and style of operation.
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On April 13 CNN-IBN's anchor Rajdeep Sardesai signed off his special discussion on Tamil Nadu elections which had DMK representative, Actor Khushboo and political commentator, Cho Ramaswamy with these remarks to Ms Khushboo: "You are defending the indefensible about DMK being corruption free. Khushboo, I must say that you have made a very good transition from an actor to a party leader defending the indefensible. Hats off". One wonders whether he will sign off with such a patronising remarks after a programme with Rahul Gandhi ( his professional background is still not known) or Sonia Gandhi or if the person was some one like actor Govinda. Or with cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Sidhu. Why does Rajdeep think that he can take liberties only with an actress-turned-politician?
CyberMedia India Ltd
Bangalore
April 14, 2011
