The elusive mustard seed

The task of journalists is to bring attention to the toll that this pandemic is taking on everyone

Last week, three letters reiterated a point I had made in my earlier column, ‘An inclusive public sphere’ (April 19), in which I had cited a study by the American Press Institute documenting the disjunction between core journalistic values and the expectations of a privileged citizenry. The first letter questioned the wisdom of the editorial, ‘Out of line’ (May 15), which pointed out a straightforward constitutional flaw. It argued that Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar’s visit to violence-hit areas in West Bengal was a breach of constitutional propriety. The second was a letter that came in defence of BJP MP Tejasvi Surya. It said that he too has his freedom of expression and the media should not gag him. The third letter was from a regular contributor, V.N. Mukundarajan, from Thiruvananthapuram, who was very unhappy with the newspaper’s coverage of the pandemic. The first two letters were virulent. Mr. Mukundarajan tried to make a case for positivity. Given the layered nature of his arguments, I reproduce here substantial portions of his mail. He wrote: “Not a day passes without the paper’s front page screaming death and destruction. The paper’s defining mood has been one of negativity underlined by a fetish for the macabre. Gruesome and revolting depictions of bodies floating on rivers and people choking to death in ICUs flashed as front-page headlines made me wonder whether I was reading a potboiler. Under the garb of telling truth to power, the paper seems to have embraced doomsday journalism. Nobody wants The Hindu to whitewash a tragedy, but over catastrophising makes one pause and look for ostensible reasons [for The Hindu’s coverage].”