Subhas Chandra Pttanayak
For one who loves Orissa it would be very painful if some one calls it Nazidom.
But when journalists are charged for sedition for having brought to light the gruelling plights the people are subjected to and managements are made to dismiss them from service even as ministers make misleading statements in the Assembly to show that the journalists were wrong, how can one say that the scenario is different from what could have been under the Nazi?
Nazi, to stay in power, depended on two stratagems: using the lies and obstructing the truth.
The first stratagem was in use in Orissa. The second stratagem has now been resorted to in the matter of stone eating by starved people of Sinapalli Block in the district of Nuapada.
As apprehended, OTV, the audio-visual channel of BJD MP Baijayant Panda has dismissed from service the reporters who had captured the act of stone eating and whose report the editorial board of the channel had telecasted at 7 PM of 31.5.2007 followed by expression of regrets by OTV for having telecasted a false report.
Shenanigans were such that the media management could not found it prudent to ask the dismissed reporters for their views on the allegation that their reports were wrong.
In Nazidom natural justice is denied to watchdogs of public interests. And, people, like we in Orissa, remain reluctant to react.
If to us it is not acceptable, we must demand for reinstatement of the dismissed reporters of OTV and for withdrawal of sedition and other charges from the said reporters and for fixation of responsibility on the team of officers for having contributed to misleading of the Assembly as discussed earlier and for having implicated the said reporters in false police cases.
If we are a responsible democracy, we cannot bear with such clumsy cases against scribes and camera journalists and cannot allow self-propelling into neo-Nazism.