Saturday, Sep 13, 2003
Saturday, Sep 13, 2003 |
| The Hindu & me | ||||
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The Hindu & me
By M.N. Venkatachaliah
Support for NTR: with N.T. Rama Rao (standing, right) at a rally to protest the dismissal of his government in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, on August 25, 1984, are P. Sundarayya (CPI-M), Atal Bihari Vajpayee (BJP) and Chandra Shekhar (Janata Party).
The information revolution of the second half of the last century and the knowledge revolution of this century will inevitably transform all institutions. To handle and manage these forces of chance in a meaningful way is a measure of the success of all institutions. The Hindu symbolises this continuity of the cherished values and responding to the global winds of change. Mahatma Gandhi mentioned three functions of the press: to understand popular feelings, to arouse desirable sentiments and to fearlessly expose popular defects. In heterogeneous and plural societies all these are susceptible to subjective and differing perceptions. Not un-often, objectivity is lost to political partisanship, personal pique, mistaken self-righteousness or churlishness. The Hindu is amongst newspapers that have, by and large, endeavoured to transcend these failings. The Hindu has fought fiercely but with dignity for the great values of a liberal democracy and probity in governance. The powerful and shattering editorials, including "A Governor the nation can do without" that were published in a space of three weeks on the political developments in Andhra Pradesh in 1984 are worth recalling. They had a telling effect.
Telugu Desam and BJP workers picketing the Secretariat in Hyderabad
The Press has to respond to the pulls of conflicting interests in society, particularly in the area of the clash between the protection of a person's private sphere of life — the right to be left alone — on the one hand and the public's right to be informed. As a German Court recently observed "when weighing-up the various interests involved, the information value of the events depicted plays a significant role. The greater the interest of the public in being informed, the more the protected interest of the person of contemporary history must recede in favour of the public's need for information. Conversely, the need to protect the depicted persons' privacy gains in weight as the value of information which the public obtains decreases... mere prying sensationalism and the public's wish to be entertained cannot be worthy of protection." A story is told about an incident during Ernest Hemingway's visit to the Far East to regale American soldiers. Liquor, it would appear, was then hard to come by. Hemingway bargained with a soldier for five bottles in exchange for five lessons in journalism that the soldier desired to take up as a career. Hemingway gave four lessons and the fifth was promised at the helipad at the time of his departure. The last lesson was: "keep your word". Hemingway kept his, though the bottles turned out to contain only tea decoction.
The Hindu has kept its word: given unto itself through its illustrious founders. It is a great institution with an awesome legacy. (The writer is a former Chief Justice of India)
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