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HYDERABAD: Even as the government faces charges of curbing the freedom of the press through surreptitious means, chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy picked on the two Telugu dailies – Andhra Jyoti and Eenadu – on Tuesday for their alleged distortion of a recent Transparency International India report on corruption in the country.
“If accountability is important for everybody, shouldn’t it be so for the media? Should they be allowed to write and present news the way they wish?,” the chief minister asked and condemned the two newspapers for twisting the facts with a view to misleading the public.
There is a running battle going on mainly between the two newspapers and the government since Rajasekhara Reddy formed the government four years ago.
Recently the city police arrested the editor and two other scribes of Andhra Jyoti following a complaint lodged by Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi (MRPS) chief Krishna Madiga alleging caste slur.
Manda Krishna belongs to Scheduled Caste. The chief minister, speaking after laying the foundation stone for the construction of an exclusive building for the state Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) at Banjara Hills, explained in detail how the two newspapers distorted the report.
The Transparency International India and Centre for Media Studies jointly carried out a country-wide survey and found that the very poor in India coughed up Rs 900 crore as bribes to get basic government services.
The chief minister said that though the figure of Rs 900 crore referred to the entire country, the report was presented in a manner that gave the impression that it happened in Andhra Pradesh, in spite of the fact that the state figured in the category of the least corrupt states.
The newspapers used Hyderabad dateline instead of New Delhi, the city from where the story had originated.
Courtesy: TimesOfIndia