Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Saturday hit out at a section of the media that targeted his government in the garb of journalism by putting out concocted, imaginary and baseless stories to show it in poor light from the very first session of the Assembly last year.
After a couple of TV channels were blacked out following strong reaction from legislators when they were humiliated on screen, came the turn of a daily to publish negative stories over his meeting with Gautam Adani, chairman and founder of Adani group.
The request of Mr. Gautam to be allowed to mine a coal block in Singareni coalfields stirred up a thought in his mind to explore bidding for coal blocks abroad, Mr. Rao said to a select gathering of journalists at the Press Academy here.
Such stories appeared in the media regularly afterwards with a “cruel” intent to stunt the development of Telangana. A Minister was even challenged to prove he was not wrong. “Naturally, I have to act to stem the rot as head of the government,” he remarked.
Perhaps, worse was when newspapers dished out a letter by L&T Metro Rail during the Congress regime in February last year threatening to pull out of the project for something unviable.
“It is quite common for corporates to use such tone and tenor in their communication but the media deliberately played up the letter.”
Mr. Rao advised restraint in journalism and said the government would do everything to promote it in the State. He said he dreamt of a Journalist Bhavan with five star suites and a decent residential accommodation for media personnel in gated communities.
To frame guidelines for the issue of accreditation cards to journalists hailing from Telangana, he announced a committee with K. Ramachandramurthy as chairman.
