http://www.countermedia.in/?p=496

January 24, 2011

By admin

By Yaseen Ashraf
The Hindu online edition carried an interesting retraction yesterday (January 23, 2011) and repeated it in today’s print edition. It was about a news item titled “Expunge remarks against Graham Staines: Supreme Court’s remarks ‘gratuitous,’ say editors, civil society members”, which had appeared in the print edition yesterday.
The correction and retraction, signed by the Editor-in-Chief says: “It was wrongly stated in the report…that the statement was signed by N Ram, Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, Chandan Mitra, Editor-in-Chief of The Pioneer, and editorial representatives from The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Hindu, The Pioneer, and The Telegraph. We apologize for the serious blunder by our Special Correspondent, who inexplicably mistook the persons to whom the statement was emailed for publication, for the list of signatories.”
What the Special Correspondent committed was at worst an unintentional gaffe, a one-time human error. The Editor-in-Chief has every right to see it as a serious slip because the erroneous report affected the editorial captains of newspapers. But The Hindu is yet to retract or apologize for deliberate, persistent and more serious violations of journalistic ethics by its then Associate Editor Praveen Swami in several reports about terror blasts. Those half-truths affected ordinary humans, not editorial celebrities.
As soon as a blast occurred, Swami was at hand with his story in all its fine details, including list of culprits and quotes from mysterious “intelligence experts” who “spoke to The Hindu.”
On September 9, 2006, the day of the Malegaon terror attack, Swami and Anupama Katakam wrote that the Malegaon bombings, preceded by a series of Hindutva attacks on mosques, were a sign of Islamist violence across the country. They went on to state: “…Javed Sheikh, a Pune-based Lashkar operative, played a key role in a 2003 attempt to bomb the Mumbai stock exchange. Before leaving to meet his Pakistani handlers at an Ahmedabad safe house, Sheikh spent several days at a Malegaon hotel with his lover and fellow operative, Ishrat Jehan Raza” By subsequent accounts, these two, Javed and Ishrat, whom The Hindu correspondents categorically incriminated, were innocents targeted by malignant forces. In fact they were later found to have been killed in fake encounters by the Gujarat police.
Immediately after the Mecca Masjid bombing at Hyderabad in 2007, The Hindu (through its expert Praveen Swami) decided who the culprits were. In his news analysis titled “Behind the Mecca Masjid bombing” Swami stated with absolute certainty: “What the Mecca Masjid bombings make clear is that the Islamist threat to India’s cities remains in place, notwithstanding the decline in violence since the Mumbai serial bombings.” The story was accompanied by a photograph, with the caption reading: “The street leading to the house of `Bilal,’ suspected to be the mastermind who planned the Hyderabad blasts, in Moosaram Bagh.” The story itself began with detailed descriptions of “Bilal’s” house, painting it and the streets leading to it in menacing colours.
In the wake of the Ajmer blasts of October 2007, Praveen Swami saw the role of “Salafi Islam in targeting the syncretic shrines in the subcontinent that represent popular Islam”.
On October 14, 2007 The Hindu carried another Praveen Swami report on its front page under the heading “New leads tie Ajmer blast to HUJI”. The disclosure this time was that the “SIM card reveals Hyderabad link”. The report stated: “In both the Mecca Masjid and Ajmer terror strikes, the bomb-maker who fabricated the explosive devices had the phone’s speaker connected to a detonator implanted in nitroglycerine-based industrial explosive…Andhra Pradesh police investigators believe that the Mecca Masjid strikes were carried out by two or more Bangladesh-based HUJI operatives, who planted the explosives in the mosque and left India soon after.”
Muslim groups attacking Muslim shrine? Yes, said Swami, and explained why: “What the Mecca Masjid bombings make clear is that the Islamist threat to India’s cities remains in place, notwithstanding the decline in violence since the Mumbai serial bombings. Under intense pressure from the United States and Europe, Pakistan has been compelled to rein in the Lashkar. Attacks on mosques, Islamist terror groups appear to hope, will be blamed on Hindu fundamentalist organizations — and thus provide the pretext they need to throw off the shackles.”
As usual, Swami reeled off several “terrorist” names. The Hindu reiterated this version in its editorial “Challenge of Islamist terror”.
Irresponsible reports like Swami’s (of which more examples will be available to anyone who cares to google) helped perpetrate state terrorism against several innocent persons, as is evident from Swami Aseemanand’s confession before a magistrate. The Hindu owes them an apology, and owes it to its readers to retract the erroneous and unverified reports of Praveen Swami.
Yaseen Ashraf is a well-known media critic