Latent disquiet in newsrooms about the way some celebrity anchors are being defended with alacrity and others being left to fend for themselves has spilled out in the open with an editor resigning from the Editors Guild of India.
Patricia Mukhim, editor of The Shillong Times, has sent her resignation letter to the Guild, saying the association was playing to the gallery to defend celebrity anchors while choosing to ignore the plea of one of its members.
In the resignation letter, Mukhim mentioned Republic TV managing director Arnab Goswami who was recently arrested in a suicide abetment case.
The Guild, founded 42 years ago with “the twin objectives of protecting press freedom and for raising the standards of editorial leadership of newspapers and magazines”, had condemned the arrest of Goswami and found it “extremely distressing”.
The Guild had called upon the Maharashtra chief minister to ensure that Goswami, who has been granted interim bail by the Supreme Court since then, was treated fairly and state power was not used against critical reporting by the media.
Mukhim said she sent her resignation letter as a member to Guild president Seema Mustafa on Monday but declined to reveal details. Mustafa could not be contacted by this newspaper for comment but sources said efforts were on to persuade Mukhim to stay on.
Two executive committee members of the Guild called her on Monday and requested her to reconsider her decision, Mukhim said. Mukhim added that she was firm on her decision.
The resignation letter accessed by this newspaper shows Mukhim was upset with the Guild for “maintaining complete silence” after Meghalaya High Court on November 10 refused to quash an FIR filed against her. The Shillong Times is the second oldest English daily in the Northeast.
The FIR was filed by the Dorbar Shnong (traditional institution) for her July 4 Facebook post following an attack on a group of non-tribal youths playing basketball in a Shillong locality.
The court had observed that the post “apparently seeks to promote disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between two communities”.
Defending her post, Mukhim had said earlier that she only raised the issue of “continued” attacks on non-tribal persons in her post.
“I had shared this High Court order with the Guild hoping that it would at least give out a statement condemning the HC order but there was and has been complete silence from the executive. Ironically, the Guild responded with alacrity and issued a statement condemning Arnab Goswami’s arrest (a non-member), not on grounds of journalistic pursuits but on an abetment to suicide case,” Mukhim’s resignation letter said.
Sources said Goswami had resigned from the Guild earlier but it had not been accepted yet.
Mukhim added in the letter: “I see this as a classic case of the Guild playing to the gallery to defend celebrity editors/anchors whose voices matter while choosing to deliberately ignore a plea (unstated) from one of its members. Clearly, this is also a case of prejudice and a deliberate attempt to push those in the margins even further away so that they disappear completely from the national discourse (since the Guild is a national association of editors) and leave them to deal with the matter in their personal capacity.
“A Facebook post is also another form of media to draw attention to a serious issue. It may not be a purely ‘journalistic’ pursuit but it still is a platform of communication which is taken seriously by the powers that be, hence an FIR being filed….”
“As such, it is no longer tenable for me to be part of this hallowed group of editors whose loyalties are to those that occupy a certain elite space. In fact, I feel completely out of place; almost an outlier in the Guild. Kindly therefore accept my resignation…,” Mukhim’s letter said.
